DEV Community: Dhaval Patel

Play Board Games Online With Friends: How I Added Online Rooms to 22 Browser Games

Dhaval Patel — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 07:29:16 +0000

Pass and Play Games started as a one-device site: 37 board, dice and party games you play by passing a single phone around the table. That works well until two things happen.

Your friends are not in the same room.
The game has secrets. Sea Battle needs hidden fleets, Imposter needs a secret word, and on a shared phone both depend on everyone politely looking away.

So I added online rooms. 22 of the games now play online: one person starts a room, shares a link or a 6-character code, and everyone plays on their own phone, tablet or laptop. Nobody signs up and nothing is installed.

Here is what changed, and the design decisions that mattered more than I expected.

What a room looks like

Pick a game and tap Create a room. You get a link, a 6-character code and a QR code for people sitting next to you.
Friends open the link or type the code, enter a name, pick a colour and take a seat.
The host taps Start. Everyone sees the same game on their own screen.

There is no account step anywhere. The name you type stays on your device, so next time it is already filled in.

The 22 online games

Group size	Games
2 players (duels)	Chess, Checkers, Tic-Tac-Toe, Sea Battle, Backgammon, Mancala, Reversi, Four in a Row, Gomoku, Royal Game of Ur, Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe, Nine Men's Morris
2 to 4	Ludo, Dots and Boxes, Shut the Box
Big groups (up to 12)	Truth or Dare, Draw and Guess, Imposter, Snakes and Ladders, Chinese Checkers, Yacht Dice, Hot Dice

The full list with player counts is on the online games page.

Decision 1: the server is the referee

On one device, the device is the referee. Online, there are three or four devices and they all have to agree. So every move goes to the server first. The server checks it against the rules, and only then does it reach the other screens. An illegal move never reaches your friend's phone, and two phones can't end up showing two different boards.

The dice work the same way. The server rolls them, so every screen shows the same throw. In online Ludo, the Roll button appears only on the phone whose turn it is.

Decision 2: hidden information stays on the server

This is the part that made online play better than passing a phone, not just more convenient.

Sea Battle: both fleets live on the server. A ship that hasn't been hit is never sent to the other player's device, so there is nothing to find in the browser's dev tools. Both players also place their fleets at the same time, instead of one after the other behind a pass screen.
Imposter: the server deals the secret word from built-in lists, so even the host doesn't know it and can play like everyone else. Every player opens their own card at the same moment, holds to read it, and taps Ready.

If you build multiplayer games, this is the rule I would steal: send each client only what that player is allowed to see. Hiding it in the UI is not enough.

Decision 3: the clock lives on the server

Online chess has an optional clock (3+2, 5+0, 10+0, 15+10). The clock runs on the server, not on either phone, so both screens always show the same time and the flag falls on the server.

The side effect is honest: locking your screen or switching apps pauses nothing. If it is your move, your time keeps running. On a weak connection you lose real seconds while your phone reconnects, so the page simply recommends Wi-Fi for fast time controls.

Decision 4: dropping out is normal, not an error

On phones, people get calls, lose signal and switch apps all the time. So:

Your seat is kept. Opening the link again on the same device puts you straight back into the game.
Everyone else sees why the game paused. A note says the player's seat is kept, and the board waits for them.
Watchers can step in. Anyone who joins after the seats are full watches the game. If a player is gone, the host can give the empty seat to a watcher, so a Ludo race doesn't die because one cousin's battery did. After two minutes away, the host can also end the game.

Decision 5: rematches keep the room

Friends rarely play just one game, so a series should need only one link. Rematch keeps the same room, the same settings and the score. In chess the colours swap each rematch, and the wins follow the people, not the colours.

What is deliberately missing

No chat or voice. Most people play alongside a call or a group chat they already have open, so the room doesn't try to be another messaging app.
No computer players online. The one-device versions have computer opponents for practice. Online rooms are for people.
Internet is required. The one-device games still work offline after your first visit. Online play obviously can't.

Rooms are private (only people with the link or code can join) and close by themselves after the game. The server keeps a room's names and moves only while the room is open.

Which one to try first

Two friends in different cities: Chess with a 10+0 clock, or Sea Battle.
Family group chat: Ludo. Drop the link in the chat and start when four names appear.
Friends on a video call: Imposter or Draw and Guess.

Every game is free, with no sign-up and no download: play board games online with friends. If you're sitting together, the original pass-and-play games on one device are still the simplest option.

I'd love feedback from people who have built real-time games: how do you handle a host who leaves mid-match, and do you let players reconnect on a different device?

I run Pass and Play Games. I wrote this post with help from an AI assistant; every feature described here is live on the site.

Designing Games for One Shared Phone: 7 UX Patterns From 30+ Pass-and-Play Games

Dhaval Patel — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 10:35:22 +0000

Most multiplayer advice assumes every player has their own screen. Pass-and-play games break that assumption: one phone sits on the table, and it moves from hand to hand. That changes almost every UX decision, from how a turn starts to what "undo" is allowed to mean.

I run Pass and Play Games, a free collection of 30+ browser games built for exactly this: chess, Ludo, dice games, and party games for up to 12 people, all on one device. These are the seven UX patterns that show up across the whole collection.

1. Hide, then pass

The core problem: some information belongs to one player only. Your dice in Liar's Dice. Your role in Mafia. The secret word in Imposter.

The fix is a pass screen between turns. The current player hides their information, hands the phone over, and the next player taps to reveal their own. In our Imposter game the phone first shows a "Pass to Riya" screen that tells everyone else to look away. Then Riya's word sits behind a "Hold to reveal" panel: she holds it to read the word, and the moment she lets go, it hides again. In Liar's Dice, a pass screen covers the dice before every turn.

In Imposter, the word only shows while Riya holds the panel. Let go and it hides.

The rule of thumb: never show private information on the same screen that hands control to the next person.

2. Make every secret turn look the same

A pass screen isn't enough if the turns look different from across the room. In Mafia, if only the mafia spend ten seconds tapping at night, everyone else can guess who they are.

So in our Mafia game, the phone visits every living player at night. The mafia choose a target, the Doctor protects someone, the Detective checks someone, and townspeople answer a harmless question. Everyone taps for a similar amount of time, so watching the person holding the phone tells you nothing.

3. Decide what actually needs to be secret

The opposite mistake is hiding everything. Not every game needs a pass screen, and extra taps slow a party down.

In our Truth or Dare, the phone stays on the table and nothing is hidden: it picks the next player, they choose, and everyone hears the card. In Charades, the secret is hidden from the guesser instead: in Forehead mode, the guesser holds the phone to their forehead while everyone else sees the word.

A useful exercise before building any game: list every piece of information and ask who is allowed to see it, and when.

4. Make turn order impossible to argue about

With one device, "whose turn is it?" causes more arguments than the rules do. Two things help:

Names in seating order. Players type their names in the order they're sitting, and turns rotate in that order. The phone always moves around the table in one direction.
Fair randomness. In Truth or Dare, "Spin" mode picks the next player randomly, but everyone has a turn before anyone gets a second one. Random enough to be fun, fair enough that nobody gets picked three times in a row.

In Truth or Dare nothing is hidden: the phone stays on the table, shows whose turn it is, and everyone can see the choice.

5. Secret votes that protect people

Group votes on one phone are awkward. If the phone shows who voted for whom, you've built a friendship-ending machine.

Two approaches that work:

Show the result, never the voters. In our Most Likely To, a secret vote shows the counts only, never who voted for whom.
Reveal only when everyone has voted. In Would You Rather's secret mode, the phone is passed round, each person taps alone, and nobody sees the split until the last vote is in.

Offering both "vote together" (show of hands, fast) and "secret vote" (slower, safer) lets each group pick.

6. Undo that can't be abused

Mis-taps are easy to make when a phone is being passed around, so undo matters. But in a game with dice, a careless undo is a cheat button.

The rule across our games: undo can reverse a decision, but never luck.

In Yacht Dice, undo returns your dice, but it never gives you a new roll.
In Hot Dice, you can take back a bank, but never a roll.
In Liar's Dice, you can undo your own bid, but not after someone has called "Liar!".
In Ludo, you can undo moving the wrong token without getting a re-roll.

In Yacht Dice, Undo stays greyed out after a roll. It can take back a scoring choice, but it never gives you a new roll.

7. Never lose the game

A shared phone gets locked, pocketed, or used to check a message mid-game. If that resets the game, the group won't come back.

So saving as you go matters. Liar's Dice saves after every bid, Ludo and Snakes and Ladders auto-save, and in Draw and Guess the drawing itself is saved, so a reload restores the turn. On top of that, every game keeps working offline after the first visit, which matters on road trips, camping weekends and flights.

Bonus: let the computer fill empty seats

"We only have three people" shouldn't stop a four-player game. In most of our board and dice games, any seat can be a computer player, so the game fits whatever group is actually in the room.

What I'd tell anyone building for one shared screen

Design the handover, not just the screen. A lot can go wrong in the two seconds when the phone changes hands: someone sees what they shouldn't, the wrong person taps, or the game loses track of whose turn it is.

If you want to see these patterns in action, the party games collection is a good place to start. And if you've built anything for one shared device, I'd love to hear which handover problem bit you hardest.

I wrote this with help from an AI assistant and checked every game detail against the live game pages.

Lessons from building 24 pass-and-play browser games for one shared phone

Dhaval Patel — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:52:23 +0000

Most online board games assume every player has their own device and an account. I wanted the opposite: two to twelve people sitting together, passing one phone, tablet or laptop around, with no sign-up and no internet needed after the first visit.

That idea became Pass and Play Games, a free collection of browser games: chess, ludo, checkers, backgammon, mancala, dominoes, plus party games like Imposter and Charades. I'm a business analyst by day, so I run it with a developer: I write the briefs and test everything, he builds the games.

Here's what we learned about designing for a single shared screen.

1. The "pass screen" matters more than the board

In chess, both players can see everything, so passing the phone is easy. In Sea Battle or Imposter, the next player must not see what the last player just saw. We added an optional pass screen between turns that only shows whose turn it is. It's optional because in open-information games it just slows things down.

2. Save after every move

Shared devices get interrupted all the time: a phone call, the screen locks, someone closes the tab. Every game saves its state on the device after each move and resumes where you left off. There's no account and no server involved: the browser storage is the save file. Players, scores and settings live there too, with backup/restore and a "delete all my data" option.

3. Offline is a feature, not a bonus

Pass-and-play happens on trains and flights, while camping, or at a relative's house with bad Wi-Fi. After the first visit, the games, rules and tutorials are stored on the device, and the site can be added to the home screen like an app.

Tip if you build something similar: test in airplane mode early. It shows problems you never notice on your desk Wi-Fi.

4. One device, many different users

When a phone moves around a table, it gets used by kids, parents and grandparents in the same evening. So the settings matter: light/dark theme, larger text and controls, colour-safe player colours, reduced motion, and an optional move confirmation to stop accidental taps.

5. Let the computer fill empty seats

Four-player Ludo with only two people feels empty. In games like Ludo, Dominoes, Chinese Checkers and Yacht Dice, computer players can fill the empty seats, and most two-player games have a computer opponent with adjustable strength.

6. Small things people notice

Undo for misclicks (very common when the device is passed around)
Rematch where the other player goes first
Session scores so a "best of five" doesn't need pen and paper

What's next

Right now there are 24 playable games, with Hot Dice, Draw and Guess, Forbidden Words and Hot Potato coming next. Chess was the first game we built. It started as a standalone pass and play chess site before it became part of the collection.

If you want to try one, pass-and-play chess is a good place to start.

I'd love feedback from other devs, especially on offline handling and the pass-screen UX. What would you want from a game that everyone plays on one device?

I wrote this post with help from an AI assistant. The project, decisions and testing are my own.