Mancala

Purpose

Built because of Club Penguin. The old internet had this beautiful thing where virtual worlds were packed with simple, lovable mini-games — and Mancala was one of those timeless board games that translated perfectly to the browser. This was an exercise in game logic, DOM manipulation, and chasing the feeling of the internet that raised us.

Stack

What I Learned

• Game logic in vanilla JavaScript is a masterclass in state management — tracking pits, stones, turns, and capture rules without a framework forces you to think in pure data and transitions
• The old internet rewarded simplicity. Club Penguin games like Cart Surfer, Puffle Roundup, Thin Ice, and Pizzatron 3000 were not technically impressive — they were fun. Fun is a design decision, not a technical one.
• DOM manipulation for game UIs teaches you exactly what React and other frameworks abstract away — and why those abstractions exist
• Building a complete game from start to finish (rules, turns, win conditions, reset) is one of the best exercises for learning to think in systems

Key Insights

• Club Penguin was a masterpiece of embedded gaming. Each mini-game lived inside a larger social world — you played Mancala at the Book Room, Cart Surfer in the Mine, Ice Fishing at the Dock. The games were not the product. The world was the product. The games were the texture that made the world feel alive.
• The Butterboard concept — a game like Club Penguin's Catchin' Waves / tubing where you ride and flow through an environment — is something I want to build one day through Hot Potato Games. The appeal is the same: low-stakes, high-feel, embedded in a larger context.
• The old internet (Miniclip, Newgrounds, Club Penguin, Neopets) understood something that modern platforms forgot: small, self-contained games with instant playability create more joy per kilobyte than any AAA title. That ethos is worth preserving and rebuilding.