Games Paglu
Game · Web
A pocket games night for people in the same room. Five party games, your phone as the prop, no accounts, no ads, no signal needed.
What is it
Games Paglu is a collection of party games that turns your browser into the game board. One place, multiple games with a UI tastefully designed by an engineer who cares (yours truly).
Pick a game, maintain scores, play another game. Don't let your phone be a distraction or the source of awkward pauses, let it be used as the game board and have a good time.
Why I built it
love a good social induction game on a party night. The experience is always:
- Spend 10 minutes finding a website that has the game.
- Spend 5 mins sharing the link and wait for the website to load for everyone.
- Spend unknown amounts of time waiting for the website to respond properly and figure out its obscure UI.
- Play, be faced with an absurd number of bugs and UI issues.
- Decide to play a different game and go through the whole process again.
So I built the games people already love, and got rid of the friction. Everyone opens the link and you're playing in under a minute. No accounts, no ads, no downloads.
The games
Who Am I? The classic phone-on-forehead guessing game. Pick celebrity, movie, place, animal, object or number, hit generate, and the word fills the screen after a 3-2-1. Everyone else gets to shout hints.
Wavelength. One person sees where a target sits between two extremes (say, cold and hot), gives a clue, and the group turns the dial to guess. The fun is seeing how well you understand your friends.
Girgit. Everyone sees the same grid of word, except one person (the Girgit). The Girgit has to bluff their way through, pretending they know the word. The group votes on who they think is the imposter. Based on Chameleon.
Mafia. The OG social induction game. The phones replace the moderator.
Tiktiki. Everyone is dropped in the same place, except the Tiktiki (Bengali for the lizard on the wall), who has to work out where they are by listening to the discussion. Based on Spyfall.
The design direction
I wanted it to feel like a party, not an app. The look is based on 80s movie posters. Loud pixellated, grainy design, low frame rates.
What's next
- More games for the table. Codenames-style word duels and a Secret Hitler-style bluffing game are in the pipeline.
- More word packs, so the same game feels fresh on the tenth round. And more pages for people searching for specific things, like a Bollywood movie generator for charades night.
- Eventually, a small bridge to Office Paglu: win at games night, and maybe a we send you a tee or a hoodie.
Stack
Next.js · TypeScript · Tailwind · Socket.IO · Redis
