Baza
The Spanish card game La Cuatrola rebuilt as a solo web release. Rules engine, three bots, six languages and a table that teaches you the rules, in under half a megabyte with no network calls.
Situation
La Cuatrola is a Spanish trick-taking card game that most people learn at a kitchen table and half-forget. The rules are short but unforgiving: twenty cards, five tricks, and one rule that shapes every hand: if you can beat the trick, you must.
I wanted a version that keeps the rules intact and removes the homework, and I wanted it to meet the constraints of YouTube Playables: a tiny download, a game that runs inside a webview on any phone, and no network calls of any kind. One developer, every discipline.
What I did
Rules engine. The full game with its scoring, the three bot opponents and the “must beat” rule enforced by the table rather than explained in a manual.
A table that teaches. Every card shows its own strength and points. When it is your turn, the table dims the cards you may not play and tells you why. Nobody reads a rules screen; the game corrects you as you go.
Size budget. Under half a megabyte reaches the player, measured on the live build. Textures, including the cover art, are drawn by the game’s own code rather than shipped as images.
Six languages in the same build, with no external requests: no analytics, no fonts, no CDN.
Self-hosted at baza.blugart.dev, embedded on this site’s Games page as the game itself, with no store chrome around it.
Result
- A complete, playable game, live in the browser.
- Under 0.5 MB delivered, six languages, zero network calls.
- Built to the YouTube Playables constraints from the first commit, so the same build can go to that platform without a diet.
Stack
Phaser 4, TypeScript, HTML5 canvas, Cloudflare Pages.