Ancient Go
Released May 2017
Go is a 3000-year-old game of strategy played by over 24 million people world-wide. Play is simple, place stones at key positions to surround territory and capture enemies. The rules can be learned in minutes, but Go has yet to be completely mastered. Ancient Go is designed for new players.
65% positive · 102 reviews
Done
All announced content has been released
High confidence
Done
All announced content has been released
High confidence
Where to buy
Steam $4.99
Can't confirm — worth a look
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Evaluation
Ancient Go launched on May 30, 2017. At launch, the developer expressed enthusiasm and described it as "a long term project and a passion," signaling intent to continue development. The game did receive ongoing updates through 2017, including feature patches and bug fixes. However, the last recorded developer communication of any kind is a minor bug fix (Update 1.2) on July 31, 2019, which addressed an OGS ranking issue. There have been no posts, patches, announcements, or communications of any kind since that date — more than six years of complete silence as of June 27, 2026. There are no unreleased DLC items listed on the store, no roadmaps or announced future content, and no developer statements about plans for additional updates. The game's store description reads as a stable, finished product. With no sustained post-launch major content cadence to speak of (only one major_content entry — the 1.0 launch itself), and developer communication having ceased entirely by July 31, 2019, the game is best understood as a completed, finished product.
Evidence
Update 1.2 — a minor OGS bug fix — is the last communication from the developer. No posts of any kind have appeared since this date.
Version 1.0 released. Developer described the game as a long-term passion project and stated development would continue.
Media
Details
Developer
Publisher
Hart Laboratories LLC
Achievements
33
Platform
Windows
Controller
partial support
Steam Deck
Not rated
Players
Single-player · Multiplayer · PvP
About this game
Go is a 3000-year-old game of strategy played by over 24 million people world-wide. Play is simple, place stones at key positions to surround territory and capture enemies. The rules can be learned in minutes, but Go has yet to be completely mastered.
Ancient Go includes tutorials, an AI opponent, ranked online play, and Steam friend challenges.
The easy AI has been custom designed for beginners to play against, a place where many AIs fail. For harder difficulties a second AI is brought in that is strong enough to beat players with hundreds of hours of experience.
Online play uses free accounts on the OGS server with 400,000 registered users, around 2,000 logged in at any one time. There are quickmatch buttons for the common board sizes, as well as custom open, and Steam challenges. If you end up playing a lot becoming an OGS supporter is highly recommended as we are not affiliated.
Ancient Go uses Unreal Engine 4 and is 64 bit. As such the minimum requirements may be more than some expect. It is full 3D, you can move the camera with the mouse by hold the right mouse button down, and by scrolling. Graphics settings are tuned automatically based on the current frame-rate. It is possible to play on slower machines, but the graphics may tune down substantially for you.
For new players the rest probably wont mean much, but players who know Go, read on.
Ancient Go uses visual hints to indicate when playing into atari, positions on the board in atari, ko's and snapbacks. These are places the new players often have trouble, so it speeds up the learning process and increases the fun factor while people learn the rules. They can be disabled in the options menu.
AGA, Chinese, and Japanese rules are supported and can be selected in the options menu. AGA is default as it solves some problems with online play the popular Japanese rule set does not.
Stone removal uses the Fuego AI to mark dead stones, but can be set manually as well.
The AI used is a combination of Fuego (which is open source) and a custom AI. It is tuned to approximate 22 kyu, 18 kyu, 14 kyu, 2 dan. If new players are reading, it means most likely you can have many hundreds into thousands of hours of experience and the AI will still be a useful opponent. There are issues present which are in most AI's where on larger boards especially the AI fails to see larger strategy, but performs well in tactical situations. As such the AI ranks become significantly worse if play is geared to take advantage of this fact. It is possible for users to replace the Fuego.exe in the working directory with newer or custom versions.
Ancient Go includes tutorials, an AI opponent, ranked online play, and Steam friend challenges.
The easy AI has been custom designed for beginners to play against, a place where many AIs fail. For harder difficulties a second AI is brought in that is strong enough to beat players with hundreds of hours of experience.
Online play uses free accounts on the OGS server with 400,000 registered users, around 2,000 logged in at any one time. There are quickmatch buttons for the common board sizes, as well as custom open, and Steam challenges. If you end up playing a lot becoming an OGS supporter is highly recommended as we are not affiliated.
Ancient Go uses Unreal Engine 4 and is 64 bit. As such the minimum requirements may be more than some expect. It is full 3D, you can move the camera with the mouse by hold the right mouse button down, and by scrolling. Graphics settings are tuned automatically based on the current frame-rate. It is possible to play on slower machines, but the graphics may tune down substantially for you.
For new players the rest probably wont mean much, but players who know Go, read on.
Ancient Go uses visual hints to indicate when playing into atari, positions on the board in atari, ko's and snapbacks. These are places the new players often have trouble, so it speeds up the learning process and increases the fun factor while people learn the rules. They can be disabled in the options menu.
AGA, Chinese, and Japanese rules are supported and can be selected in the options menu. AGA is default as it solves some problems with online play the popular Japanese rule set does not.
Stone removal uses the Fuego AI to mark dead stones, but can be set manually as well.
The AI used is a combination of Fuego (which is open source) and a custom AI. It is tuned to approximate 22 kyu, 18 kyu, 14 kyu, 2 dan. If new players are reading, it means most likely you can have many hundreds into thousands of hours of experience and the AI will still be a useful opponent. There are issues present which are in most AI's where on larger boards especially the AI fails to see larger strategy, but performs well in tactical situations. As such the AI ranks become significantly worse if play is geared to take advantage of this fact. It is possible for users to replace the Fuego.exe in the working directory with newer or custom versions.
Are these done yet?
Last evaluated Jun 27, 2026
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