STRAT

Chess + poker + dice, where your chips are your clock.

STRAT is a two-player game I designed that puts chess, poker and dice on one neon table. Every chess turn starts with a hand of poker. Win the hand and you earn pawns to drop onto the board, save for later, or spend knocking out an enemy pawn. Then the dice decide which piece moves and where it goes.

The twist: your poker chips are time. Every bet, blind and ante costs you time, and every pot you win gives time back. Checkmate your opponent, or run them out of time.

HOW TO PLAY

1. On the main menu pick STRAT, then New match vs AI or Pass-and-play.

2. Each player rolls a die. The higher roll plays White.

3. Each turn: play a hand of poker. If the hand goes to a showdown, the winner places, saves or removes pawns. Then the player whose chess turn it is rolls the dice and moves.

4. You win by checkmate, or when your opponent has no chips, no ante pawns and nothing left to sell.

The pop-up and the bottom bar always show every choice you have this turn, so you can learn as you go.

CONTROLS (MOUSE AND KEYBOARD)

• Move a piece: click it, then click a square (or drag it).

• Bet: drag chips from your stack to your bet spot, then press Push. Point at a card to lift it. In draw games, click cards to mark discards.

• Camera: right-drag to orbit, middle-drag (or Shift + right-drag) to pan, mouse wheel to zoom. The buttons at the bottom right jump to preset views. "?" shows the controls again.

• L shows or hides the game log.

• Stand up (top bar) lets you walk the room with WASD or the arrow keys. Walk back to the table and press E to sit down.

BROWSER OR DOWNLOAD?

• In the browser: made for desktop browsers with WebGL 2 (Chrome, Edge or Firefox). The first load is about 40 MB. It isn't made for phones or tablets.

• Windows: unzip and run STRAT.exe. The build isn't code-signed yet, so if SmartScreen asks, click "More info", then "Run anyway".

• Linux: unzip, run "chmod +x STRAT.x86_64" if needed, then ./STRAT.x86_64

• Saves stay on your computer. In the browser version they live in your browser's storage for this page.

EARLY ACCESS: KNOWN ISSUES AND ROUGH EDGES

• No audio yet. Music is coming in an update.

• This is a release candidate of v1.0. It has lots of automated testing but not many human players yet, so expect a few rough edges.

• The browser version is heavier than the downloads. If it runs slowly on your machine, try the Windows or Linux download.

• If the turn pop-up ever sits on top of something you want to see, you can drag, resize or minimize it.

• The browser version has no Quit button. Just close the tab.

NO REAL MONEY

Chips are clock time. They're never bought, sold, cashed out, traded or saved for real value. There's nothing to buy in the game, and this is not real-money gambling.

FEEDBACK

Please leave feedback, bug reports and rule questions in the comments below. That's the only feedback channel, and I read them all.

PAY WHAT YOU WANT

You can play free in the browser. The downloads are pay what you want, with $5 suggested. Anything you chip in helps me keep building.

CREDITS AND AI DISCLOSURE

• Game design, rules and direction: Oofta (Oofta House).

• Art: made by Oofta with Grok image generation.

• Music (coming in an update): made by Oofta with Suno.

• Code: written with AI coding assistants under Oofta's direction.

• Made with the Godot Engine (MIT license).

STRAT is the first game from Oofta House.