Deal Breakers - 3D Multiplayer Card Game

Deal Breakers ("Deal. Bluff. Break hearts.") started as a way to keep game night going with friends in different cities. It runs in the browser with nothing to install and no account: one player starts a table, shares a 12-character room code, and everyone joins from their own device. It has two games: Badam Satt (Sevens, opened by the 7 of hearts), played solo or in teams, and No Limit Texas Hold'em poker with play chips.

• A 3D table: every player is a cartoon character in a chair who throws the card they play, knocks on the table to pass, pushes chips in to bet and acts out emotes
• 12 characters to pick from: The Bluffer, The Panic, The Gremlin, The Boss, The Drama and more, each with its own build, face, outfit and idle personality
• Voice chat: talk to the whole table, only to your team, or privately to the player you are helping. Everyone sees the two characters whispering, but only they hear it
• Teams and helpers: in Badam Satt a team plays as one seat; in poker a player who folds can get up and stand beside a player still in the hand to help them
• Pranks: tap another player to throw a tomato, an egg, a chappal, a cream pie or a water balloon at them, or blow an air horn to tell them to hurry up
• Announcer: big stamped words and sound cues for the moments worth a reaction, like the opening 7♥, a team down to its last card, all in, showdown and the winner
• Up to 8 players per room, and late arrivals can join a poker table between hands

There is no game server. Every browser runs the game, so the hard part was making sure nobody can cheat by reading the database or changing their own client:

• Mental-poker shuffle: every player or team locks and shuffles the deck in turn using elliptic-curve cryptography, so no player, host or database owner can see another hand
• End-of-game check: when a game ends, every browser replays it and checks that nobody passed while holding a playable card
• Encrypted rooms: names, moves, emotes and voice signalling are encrypted in the browser, and the key comes from the part of the room code that never reaches the database
• Chips can't be faked: stacks are rebuilt from the list of moves on every device, so no player can change their own balance

• React + TypeScript + Vite for the app and screens
• three.js for the table, lighting and characters. The characters are built from code out of simple low-poly shapes, so the game ships no model files, and three.js only loads once a table is on screen
• Firebase Realtime Database for room state and signalling, with Anonymous Auth and database rules that enforce who can write what
• WebRTC voice mesh between players
• Web Audio for the announcer and sound effects
• Unit tests for the game rules, poker hand ranking and side pots, and the crypto

The source code is private.

• Play it: dealbreakers.web.app