What are dominoes?
A family of tile games, played in more than one way, with more than one kind of set.
Western dominoes of this type appeared in Europe in the 18th century and are now familiar in most parts of the world, most often as a double-six set in which each end of each tile has from zero to six spots. pagat.com The set contains 28 tiles, one from each pairing of the numbers 0 to 6. pagat.com Britannica Kids says the usual set consists of 28 dominoes: flat, rectangular blocks made of bone, wood, or plastic. The 28th piece is the double blank. Britannica Kids
Chinese dominoes are thought to have originated in the 12th century and are presumably the ancestors of Western dominoes, though the exact relationship is obscure. pagat.com On a Chinese set the ends show spots from 1 to 6, corresponding to the throws of two six-sided dice. There are 21 different tiles, but the set contains two copies of the 11 tiles of the "sky" suit, so there are 32 tiles in total. pagat.com Unlike Western dominoes, there are no blank tiles in Chinese dominoes. The Western set has 28 tiles in the standard double-six set; the Chinese set has 32 tiles. pagat.com
Two basic forms of the game, in that Students article, are block and draw. Britannica Kids
Look next at the set, or at the two basic games, block and draw.
Did Western dominoes develop independently?
Britannica Kids says Western dominoes probably developed later, independently from the Chinese version, in Italy or France in the 18th century. Pagat treats Chinese tiles as clearly ancestral, or at least presumably ancestral, and notes a debate over whether the European set came from China in the fourteenth century or later, or was invented independently. Dummett, as quoted on Pagat, dates the European introduction to Italy, possibly Venice and Naples, in the 18th century. We report both wordings and do not pick a single origin story as the last word.