What's New
GameYantra is worked on most days. This page lists what changed, newest first: new games, new ways to play, and fixes you would notice. Every game here is free in the browser, with no download and no sign-up.
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Hearts and Spades: online play, 2-player tables and phone-friendly layout
- Play Online in Hearts and Spades: join the lobby and challenge a real opponent. Browser players and the Hearts & Spades Android app share one lobby, so a laptop can play a phone.
- New 2-player games against the computer: two-handed Hearts on a 28-card deck, and heads-up Spades where you draw your hand before bidding. Classic 4-player Hearts to 100 and partnership Spades to 500 are still there.
- Both games now play upright on a phone. The hand scrolls sideways when it does not fit, and you can rotate mid-game without losing your place.
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The Royal Game of Ur: play a friend online
The Royal Game of Ur now has Play Online. Everyone gets an anonymous name such as Guest4821; tell a friend yours and they can challenge you. There is no chat and no account, and only the moves are sent. It shares a lobby with the Board Games for All Android app.
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Six Indian card games now fit your phone
Gulam Chor, Zabboo, Mongoose, 78, 5-3-2 and Rummymates now play upright on a phone as well as sideways. The computer players in Rummymates also take their turns faster.
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Two new games: 31 (Scat) and Palace
- 31 (Scat): draw and discard to get as close to 31 in one suit as you can, then knock.
- Palace: play out your hand and your face-up and face-down cards before anyone else.
- Both launched phone-ready, and Kings in the Corner, Card Golf and Seven Up now play upright too. The home page also loads faster.
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Tien Len arrives, and fourteen more games go portrait
- New: Tien Len, the Vietnamese shedding game, built for phones from the start.
- Now upright on phones: Mendicot, Scopa, Crazy Eights, Go Fish, Judgement, Callbreak, Badam Saat and Bluff.
- All five dice games too: Yacht, Farkle, Pig, Bunco and Liar's Dice.
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Backgammon, and the board games on phones
- New: Backgammon, playable upright or sideways.
- Now upright on phones: Checkers, Nine Men's Morris, Hex, Lines of Action, Konane, Kono, Disc Flip, Bridge Connect, The Royal Game of Ur, Donkey and Garbage.
- Phones held upright no longer stop at a "please rotate" screen before the game loads.
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Every game loads much faster
We went through all 68 games then on the site and rebuilt their images, sounds and fonts. Together they shrank from about 1.6 GB to under 450 MB, a 72% cut. Badam Saat alone went from 27 MB to 6.6 MB. On a phone connection, games now start in a fraction of the time.
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Scopa and Go Fish, and every rules page re-checked
- New: Scopa, the Italian capturing game, and Go Fish.
- We re-read the rules on every game page against the game's own code and corrected wherever the two disagreed, so the page now describes the game you actually play.
- Designer's notes added to our original games, including General's Gambit, Card Chess, Ludo Card Sprint and Endlock.
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Six new games
Kings in the Corner and Spite & Malice (25 August), following Block Bastion, Box Cricket, Robo Hockey and Loopedout (11 August).
Found a bug or a rule that looks wrong? Tell us on the Contact page. Fixes like that end up on this page.