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Rocketcrab: Party Games for Phones

rocketcrab.com

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Rocketcrab: Party Games for Phones

#21

My company has been playing a game to end every work week since the pandemic started, so we can try to maintain culture. This will be great, thanks for sharing!

Do you have any recommendations? In the beginning I would run "virtual game nights", by screen sharing Jackbox party games. It was simple for people to join with their phones remotely and play, but it was a bit of a hassle sometimes to set up, meaning it basically had to be me who ran the game night every time. I haven't looked around at what's out there after almost a year of a pandemic, so I'm sure there are loads…

We've been using https://backyard.co/ since they bundle video chat and the games all in one place, in the browser so anyone can instajoin

Re: Rocketcrab: Party Games for Phones

#22

Hello, I created rocketcrab! Who posted this?? :D thanks i guess? AMA if you want!

Digging around just a little, these all seem to be secret-information games (where one person/some subset are one thing, the rest are something else). Oh, and drawing games. Anything else? I guess the secret-info ones are easy to code?

Not sure if it's intentional but you sound unnecessarily demeaning.

Re: Rocketcrab: Party Games for Phones

#23

Hello, I created rocketcrab! Who posted this?? :D thanks i guess? AMA if you want!

Digging around just a little, these all seem to be secret-information games (where one person/some subset are one thing, the rest are something else). Oh, and drawing games. Anything else? I guess the secret-info ones are easy to code?

unfortunately.... yeah that's kind of what we're working with right now. :)

On the bright side though, I'm hoping that the mere existence of rocketcrab may inspire more developers to build even more diverse mobile web party games. Without rocketcrab, not only do you have to design and develop a game, it will be all for nothing if you can't find players to play your game, which is tough! The idea is that adding your game to rocketcrab will help it find an audience! if that makes sense :)

Also I have a giant list of mobile web party games that I want to try to add but haven't had the time. If anyone wants to give it a shot, rocketcrab PRs are open ;D

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OESjJwnSVhYH84mrA9LH...

Re: Rocketcrab: Party Games for Phones

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, rocketcrab creator here! :) Could you elaborate on what you mean by demo mode?

I would like a mode that would let me connect few dummy players and be able to switch between them to understand the flow of game. If I cannot go through joining process and all the game screens beforehand, I wouldn't suggest it in a party setting to figure it out there. Not sure how much rocketcrab can do here?

Completely agree about suggesting games you don't understand to a party. Nothing worse than a playing a game no one understands and ruining the fun. :(

So, rocketcrab opens games in iframes, so techincally I could have a mode where it would open four or so iframes on your screen to demo a game. The problem is that this would not work for many of the games as they rely on cookies/local storage that would be messed up with multiple iframes.

You could also just try opening rocketcrab as is in multiple tabs, but you'd run into the same issue with some games. Best you could do is open Chrome, Firefox, Safari/Edge, and your phone to get 4 players xD

Ultimately, my plan is to add screenshots of each game. Kind of like the App Store. I've been slacking on doing it for more games cause it's a lot of work, but here's an example:

https://rocketcrab.com/game/drawphone

Otherwise, developers are free to add their own demo mode (Drawphone has this!)

Re: Rocketcrab: Party Games for Phones

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like a mode that would let me connect few dummy players and be able to switch between them to understand the flow of game. If I cannot go through joining process and all the game screens beforehand, I wouldn't suggest it in a party setting to figure it out there. Not sure how much rocketcrab can do here?

Completely agree about suggesting games you don't understand to a party. Nothing worse than a playing a game no one understands and ruining the fun. :( So, rocketcrab opens games in iframes, so techincally I could have a mode where it would open four or so iframes on your screen to demo a game. The problem is that this would not work for many of the games as they rely on cookies/local storage that would be messed up…

Instead of opening multiple browsers, open new windows in private (incognito) mode and connect to the same game.

Re: Rocketcrab: Party Games for Phones

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any recommendations? In the beginning I would run "virtual game nights", by screen sharing Jackbox party games. It was simple for people to join with their phones remotely and play, but it was a bit of a hassle sometimes to set up, meaning it basically had to be me who ran the game night every time. I haven't looked around at what's out there after almost a year of a pandemic, so I'm sure there are loads…

We've been using https://backyard.co/ since they bundle video chat and the games all in one place, in the browser so anyone can instajoin

wow that looks really cool! any idea who's behind it?

Re: Rocketcrab: Party Games for Phones

#30

Please don't hijack my back button.

Which page did this? Rocketcrab is built with next.js so i'm kind of half using the "pages" feature. But I'm open to ideas on how to use it better :)

when you are browsing games, hit back button, you are taken all the back out, not to the previous page.
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