What is Diceonaut?
Diceonaut is AtashiTech's consumer gaming platform for online board games: seven classic board and casual titles that run in a browser tab, with no download, no install and no app store account. A player opens the site, picks a game, and either invites a friend to a private room, matches with a stranger, plays against the computer, or hands the same device back and forth for pass-and-play. Games are synchronised in real time over WebSockets, so a move made on a phone in one city appears immediately on a laptop in another, and a dropped connection rejoins the same board rather than losing it.
It is free to play and built in TypeScript, drawing every board on the HTML canvas rather than with page elements, which is why it behaves the same on a five-year-old Android phone as it does on a desktop. Diceonaut is our own product, published at diceonaut.com, and it is also the clearest public demonstration of the real-time and touch engineering we bring to client work.
Why a casual game belongs on the web
The decision to build Diceonaut for the browser rather than as an installed app shaped everything else about it.
An invitation is just a link
Casual games are played because somebody asked. A store download between the invitation and the first move is where most of that intent is lost. A Diceonaut room is a URL: the person who receives it is on the board within seconds, on whatever device is in their hand.
Every device, one build
Phones, tablets, laptops and shared machines all run the same code. There is nothing to update, nothing to keep compatible with two store review processes, and no version skew between the two people sitting in a game together.
Nothing to install, nothing to hand over
No install prompt, no permissions dialogue and no app-store account stands between a player and a game of Ludo. That matters for a casual title that somebody plays for ten minutes while waiting for a bus.
How a game of Diceonaut runs
Four steps from an idle tab to a finished game, and the third is where the engineering lives.
Pick a game
The lobby lists the seven titles with the modes each one supports. Nothing is locked, nothing has to be unlocked by playing something else first, and a player who only ever wants Ludo never has to see the rest.
Choose how to play
Create a private room and share the link, join an open match, take on the computer, or pass one device between players in the same room. The same board and the same rules serve all four modes; only the source of the opponent's moves changes.
Play in sync
Moves travel over a WebSocket connection and are validated on the server, so both players see the same board state and neither client can be trusted into an illegal move. Turn order, timers and the dice are settled centrally rather than on whichever device rolled first.
Finish, rematch or leave
The result is shown, a rematch keeps the same room and the same opponents, and a player who closes the tab by accident can return to a game still in progress rather than forfeiting it.
Seven online board games in the browser
The selection of online board games is deliberately familiar. Every one of these is a game people already know how to play, which is the point of a casual platform: no tutorial should stand between arriving and playing.
Ludo
The four-player race with dice, captures and safe squares, playable with friends in a private room, with strangers, against the computer, or by passing one phone around a table.
Snakes and Ladders
Pure chance and the oldest board in the collection. It is the game newcomers pick first because there is nothing at all to learn, and it is the one that gets a group playing in under a minute.
Tic-Tac-Toe
Three in a row on a nine-square grid. It is a solved game, so the computer opponent plays it optimally and the only way to avoid losing is to play perfectly yourself, which is exactly why it remains a good two-minute duel.
Connect Four
Drop discs into a seven-column grid and build four in a line before your opponent does. Simple to start and genuinely tactical once both players have learned to watch the diagonals.
Gomoku
Five in a row on a large grid, the deepest strategy game in the set. The board is big enough that positional thinking matters, and short enough that a match still fits into a coffee break.
Duel Deck
A fast head-to-head card game for two players, built for quick rounds and rematches rather than long sessions, and the title in the collection most suited to a rapid best-of-five.
9-Ball Pool
The one game here that is not turn-based logic. Shots are aimed and struck with a drag, and a physics engine resolves the collisions, spin and cushions, which makes it the most demanding thing on the platform to render smoothly on a phone.
Three ways to find an opponent
Every title supports the modes that suit it. The difference is only where the opposing move comes from.
Most casual platforms assume you have friends online at the moment you want to play. Diceonaut assumes you may not, which is why the computer opponent and pass-and-play are first-class rather than afterthoughts.
Online multiplayer
A private room shared by link, or an open match against another player looking for the same game. State is held on the server, so both players see one board and a reconnection returns to the position rather than to the lobby.
Against the computer
An opponent that is always available. For the solved games it plays with perfect logic, which means a draw is the best a human can force in Tic-Tac-Toe, and the strategy titles are searched deeply enough to punish a careless move.
Pass and play
Two or more players on one device, taking turns. It needs no second account, no invitation and no network at all beyond the first page load, which makes it the mode that works in a car, a queue or a waiting room.
How Diceonaut is built
Drawing on the canvas rather than with page elements is what keeps a board at a steady frame rate on a modest phone, and holding the authoritative game state on the server is what stops a modified client from cheating. Those are the same two decisions behind the display-board application in our queue management kiosk software, where a screen has to redraw live data continuously and cannot be trusted to decide anything on its own.
What Diceonaut demonstrates
It is a real product with real players, and it is also the public proof of three capabilities that are otherwise hard to show, because most of our work runs inside somebody else's building.
Real-time systems that stay in sync
Two clients, one authoritative state and an unreliable network is the same problem whether the payload is a dice roll, a token number on a waiting-room screen or a vehicle position on the live map in FleetFlow. Our web application development team builds both.
Interfaces for people who will not read instructions
A player of online board games and a member of the public at a self-ordering kiosk have the same tolerance for a confusing screen, which is none. That constraint is what our UI/UX design practice exists to work within.
Performance on the device people actually own
Smooth rendering on old hardware is a discipline, not a setting. The same discipline decides whether a signage or TV application looks right, which is why our Android TV and signage work starts from the target device.
If you are considering a consumer product of your own, a game, a real-time tool or anything that has to feel immediate in a browser, Diceonaut is the quickest way to see how we build. A companion mobile version of a web product is handled by our Android and iOS app development practice, hosting and deployment by our cloud, DevOps and integration team, and the rest of what we make is on the products and services pages. Notes on interface and performance work appear on the AtashiTech blog.
Play it, then talk to us about yours
Diceonaut is free to play in the browser, so the fastest way to judge our front-end and real-time work is to open a game and invite somebody. If you have a consumer or real-time product in mind, tell us what it has to feel like and we will tell you how we would build it. Reach us through the contact page.