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John Champaign Writes

Adventures in Self Publishing

Digital Board Games

I build digital adaptations of board games — playable in the browser with friends (asynchronous online play, no accounts needed) or as desktop apps with AI opponents. They’re all built on a shared open foundation I extracted from the projects as they grew: a small TypeScript framework that handles the multiplayer plumbing (turns, hidden information, notifications, chat) so each game only has to implement its own rules.

Browse everything in one place: games-hub-5vo.pages.dev — the lobby that links to every live game.

Play in your browser

Star Wars: Rebellion

The asymmetric galactic struggle: the Empire hunts the hidden Rebel base while the Rebellion races to spark galaxy-wide revolt. Two players, online asynchronous play with email turn notifications and in-game chat — perfect for a game that unfolds over days.

  • ▶ Play online
  • 💻 Source code

Tyrants of the Underdark

Deck-building meets area control in the drow city-states of the Underdark. Recruit minions, deploy troops, and assassinate your rivals’ forces. 2–4 players, hotseat on one screen or asynchronous online.

  • ▶ Play online
  • 💻 Source code

Tic-Tac-Toe

Not much of a board game, but it earns its place: it’s the framework’s reference implementation — the smallest possible end-to-end online game, useful as a template for new projects.

  • ▶ Play online

Desktop games (Windows, with AI opponents)

Innovation

Carl Chudyk’s card game of civilization and invention — build a tech tree from Pottery to The Internet, where every card’s ability can be shared (or suffered) by your rivals. Single-player against an AI opponent with two-ply lookahead, plus a one-click bug reporter that has driven 25+ releases of refinements.

  • ⬇ Download for Windows
  • 💻 Source code

Impulse

Another Chudyk design: a fast 4X space game where the cards in your hand are also the map, the technologies, and the economy. Single-player against AI.

  • ⬇ Download for Windows
  • 💻 Source code

In development

  • Innovation (online) — a TypeScript port bringing Innovation to the browser with online multiplayer.
  • Axis & Allies (classic) — the 1942 world-at-war wargame.

The Digital Boardgame Framework

All of these games share a common foundation: digital-boardgame-framework, a small TypeScript library published on npm. It deliberately isn’t a game engine — each game owns its own rules and UI. What it provides is everything around the rules:

  • Asynchronous online multiplayer — turn-based play over days, with tokenized per-player links (no accounts or passwords)
  • Hidden information done right — the server stores the true game state and each player sees only their own redacted view
  • Email turn notifications and reminders when a game goes stale
  • Realtime updates when both players happen to be online at once
  • In-game chat
  • One-click bug reports that capture the full game state, so a player’s “something looks wrong” arrives as a reproducible snapshot
  • Deterministic engines — seeded randomness and full game-history snapshots, so any game can be replayed and any bug can be rerun

It runs on Cloudflare Pages and Supabase, both on free tiers — each game costs essentially nothing to host. The games above are the proof: the same plumbing powers a two-player asymmetric wargame, a four-player deck-builder, and tic-tac-toe.

A note on art and ownership

These are fan-made digital adaptations for personal play. The underlying game designs belong to their designers and publishers (Fantasy Flight Games, Wizards of the Coast / Gale Force Nine, Asmadi Games), and none of their artwork is redistributed through these projects — the apps either use original placeholder art or let you import imagery from sources you already own. If you enjoy any of these games, please buy the physical editions.

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