GoProgs Games

The problem

Classic games such as chess, sudoku, solitaire, ludo and carrom are easy to find online, but often come wrapped in ads, sign-up prompts and pages that load slowly on a phone. Someone who wants a quick game of solitaire on a break, or a round of rung, should not have to wait through any of that.

GoProgs Games is not a client offer, but it is a public product, and it has to meet the same standards as anything else we put online.

What we built

GoProgs Games is a collection of 30 free classic games that run in the browser:

• Board and strategy games such as chess, ludo and carrom.
• Puzzle games such as sudoku and mahjong.
• Card games such as solitaire and rung.
• Arcade classics such as snake.

Every game is free, with no ads and no sign-up. The games work on mobile as well as desktop, so the same collection is playable on a laptop or a phone.

How it runs

GoProgs Games is a static site. There is no application server and no database: each game is a set of files the browser downloads and runs on its own.

The site is produced by a build pipeline built on esbuild and Python scripts. Because the output is plain static files, it is fast to serve and has very little to maintain at runtime.

Like our other products, it is served from a Docker-based Linux server we manage, behind Caddy, with HTTPS certificates from Let’s Encrypt issued and renewed automatically.

What it taught us

Thirty small products in one place taught us lessons that carry over to client work, especially front-end work:

• Use the simplest architecture that does the job. Games that run entirely in the browser do not need a server. When a client project can be a static site, we say so, because it is cheaper to host and has less to break.
• Automate the build. With thirty games, nothing can be done by hand. A scripted build that produces every game the same way keeps releases routine. We set up the same kind of pipeline on client projects.
• Design for touch as well as the mouse. Board and card games depend on precise input. Making them playable on a phone screen meant thinking about touch targets, layout and orientation for each game, and we apply the same care to client interfaces.
• Respect the user’s time. No ads and no sign-up are product decisions, not only technical ones. In client work, we ask which prompts, pop-ups and required fields actually earn their place.
• Keep many small things consistent. Thirty games share one site and one build. Shared structure is what keeps a large set of screens maintainable.

Where it’s going

GoProgs Games is live, with 30 free games and no ads or sign-up. It stays a side project that we maintain alongside our other products, and a simple place to see the care we put into front-end work.