500 is the card game I've played with the same group of friends since college. It's simpler than bridge, more interesting than euchre. The existing online versions are buggy, clumsily monetized, and don't follow our house rules. I've wanted to build my own since I was working in the Java games division at Nokia. That was twenty years ago. I finally built it in two days with Claude.
No accounts, no server, no database. Share a room code; play from anywhere. Four players, peer-to-peer, entirely in the browser.
Its main purpose is a tutorial mode for learners that walks through setting up the wall the way it’s done at a real table: rolling to choose East, counting around the table and into the wall to find the break, breaking the wall, and dealing the tiles out in turn. None of the digital mahjong games I’ve found teach wall setup, and it’s the biggest barrier to playing in person.
Hong Kong rules with faan scoring. You can also play a hand against bots; four-player online play is part of what’s in beta testing.
- Rolling to choose who sits East, the dealer
- Counting around the table to pick the wall that breaks
- Counting into that wall, two tiles at a time, to find the break
- Breaking the wall and marking the dead wall
- Dealing in fours for three rounds, then the final round
- Why East starts with 14 tiles