CardsALot

The Problem

Families used to play cards around the kitchen table after dinner. Then everyone moved: college, jobs, a house three states over, a parent in another time zone. The cards are still in the drawer, but it’s hard to get everybody around the table.

Most online card games don’t help. They want every player to install an app and make an account, and many come with ads, gambling or chat with strangers. That’s a hard sell for a grandparent, or for a ten-minute game on a Tuesday night.

What I Built

• Card games where one person hosts from the phone app and everyone else joins from a web browser, with nothing to download and no account to create.
• Players on an iPhone, an Android tablet and a laptop can all sit at the same table.
• No ads, no gambling, no real money and no chat with strangers.
• Every host gets five free games a month, and guests are always free. Hosts who want more can buy them in the app.
• Sign-in by emailed link, Apple or Google, so there’s no password to remember.
• One shared game platform underneath, so each new game reuses the same multiplayer, reconnect and account code instead of starting from scratch.

The Games

STACKS is out now: a fast card game about stacking. Nickels, a rummy-style game where the wild card changes every deal, is in development, with its own iOS, Android and web versions on the same platform.

Where It Is Now

STACKS is live and playable today, in 14 languages. Nickels is in development, and I’d rather ship it right than announce a date and miss it.

What It Means for Your Project

CardsALot is real-time software: many people on different devices see the same thing at the same moment, and nobody but the host installs anything. If your organization needs people to join something quickly from whatever device they have, without accounts or app-store hassle, I can build that, and build it so it works for kids and grandparents alike.