玲珑 adj. 1 exquisitely made. 2 clever; quick-witted.
A two-player strategy duel through Chinese craftsmanship.
Build your workshops. Compete for the court.
Lay one Jade chip as you place a team: +1 workforce, with up to three workshops.
Linglong Duel is a two-player, turn-based strategy board game inspired by Chinese craftsmanship. Gather materials from a circular board, develop your collection of workshops, and send your finest teams to compete for the court’s commissions. Play against a computer rival, share one device, or invite a friend online.
Jade, silver, porcelain, cinnabar lacquer, and zisha pottery: five crafts with different strengths. Your workshops provide discounts for future building and the techniques and workforce needed to win commissions. You have room for just six. Which will you keep, which will you send away, and what are you leaving for your rival?
Each action brings the next judging closer. Commit early to secure your place, reinforce a contested commission, or wait for an opening. A well-timed team can beat a larger one through the variety of its techniques. Winning workshops are summoned to court until the clock peg reaches the next deadline ring, so today's success changes what you can do tomorrow.
Strengthen jade with raw stone. Move a silver team to another commission. Reinforce porcelain, inlay lacquer with pearl, or teach a zisha workshop a missing technique. Combine the crafts to fit your plans—and disrupt your rival's.
Hold three imperial patrons to win immediately, or finish with the most prestige when the final imperial commission is judged. Watch both paths: a rival who seems behind may be one patron away from victory.
I have spent much of my life in the Chinese-speaking world: home in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan, seasons in mainland China and Singapore. Tea was always on the table. In time I followed it to the source, spending whole afternoons with farmers in the hills of Wuyishan. Then I went to see who made the cups.
In Yixing, I watched apprentices work beside their masters and press their seals into the clay. In Jingdezhen, I saw imperial porcelain rejected by the court: smashed, buried, and pieced together centuries later. In Taipei, I lingered over an emperor’s curio box, no bigger than a book, with a small treasure of every craft inside.
Those encounters became the world of Linglong. Five crafts, each with its own character. Long, narrow cards like the ones the old uncles play in the park. A digital table with weight, texture and sound, where petals settle and rain darkens the cloth.
A friend and I never travel without a board. Some games are played to win; ours is played to keep playing. Over the years we changed so many rules that we needed a game of our own. So I made one, for the pleasure of sitting across from someone you know well, and still being surprised by their next move.
Philip SeifiDesigner, Backstamp Games
遊蜂見蜜停在花上我本漂泊見落日竟駐足啜花香茗漸近蜂心
| Hardware & system | Windows | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 10, 64-bit | macOS 13 | Ubuntu 22.04, 64-bit |
| Processor | Dual-core 2 GHz | Apple M1 or Intel Core i5 | Dual-core 2 GHz |
| Memory | 8 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM |
| Graphics | Intel HD 4000 or equivalent | Apple M1 integrated or Intel Iris Plus | Intel HD 4000 or equivalent |
| Storage | 2 GB available | 2 GB available | 2 GB available |