How my small game to play with friends grew into a 12-game browser platform

Hi Indie Hackers!

I'm excited to share GodGame Platform (https://godgame.net), a web-based board and casual game platform.

## How it started

It honestly started as a personal project just for fun. I wanted to play against AI when I was bored, or easily send a link to a friend for a quick match without dealing with app downloads or sign-ups.

As I kept adding games that I personally wanted to play, it naturally grew until it became a platform with 12 different games:

- Global classics: Chess, Omok (Gomoku), 8-Ball Pool, 2D Golf, Territory, Dots & Boxes

- Traditional games: Yut Nori (a traditional Korean board game where you cast wooden sticks to race tokens—highly strategic and fun with friends!), Janggi (Korean Chess), and Alkkagi (Korean stone-flicking game)

## Key Features

- Zero Friction: No downloads, no installs. Anyone can jump in as a guest, create a room, and share the link.

- Community: Registered users can track game stats/ratings and chat on the community boards.

- Ultra-lightweight: Built with pure Vanilla JS, Canvas, and WebSockets (zero heavy frontend frameworks) to keep load times under a second.

## The biggest challenge: Optimization on a budget server

Since I run this on a very low-cost server, keeping backend resource usage minimal was my top priority:

- In games like 8-Ball Pool, running physics on the client kept server load near zero, but synchronizing ball movements without desyncs between two players took a lot of trial and error.

- In Territory, handling multiplayer and AI calculations in the browser without lag or overloading the server required plenty of tuning and tick separation.

- Traditional board games like Yut Nori, Omok, and Janggi evaluate their rules and AI locally in the browser to keep gameplay responsive with almost no server overhead.

I'd love to hear your feedback on the gameplay, performance, or any ideas for improvement!