Rakket is a party game for large groups that runs in a browser: one shared screen shows the game and everyone plays from their own phone, so a room of twenty, fifty or a hundred all play at once. The group size is limited by the room rather than by the number of controllers on the sofa.
A board game deals cards to eight people. A console game has four controllers. A quiz app puts everyone on a phone but leaves nothing on the wall for the room to shout at. When a party passes twenty, the game usually splits into small pockets of people and the evening goes quiet.
Rakket keeps the shared state on the big screen and gives every player their own controls. Above twenty, a party deals into stable teams and runs several heats of the same game at once, paired round to round, so nobody waits, nobody changes seat, and one scoreboard still holds the whole room.
One browser tab on whatever the room can see: a television, a laptop, a projector, a hall’s own screen. It puts a four-letter code and a QR square on the wall.
Guests scan or type the code, pick a name and a face, and take a seat. No app, no account, and no queue at the door while thirty people install something.
The party deals stable teams and runs several matches of the same game at the same moment, so nobody is watching four people on a stage.
Each round a ladder re-pairs teams by their record, so games stay close. The display shows the standings while the heats play out on the phones.
Every game plays at any size, but these three are the ones a crowd notices.
Answer a blitz prompt, then swipe through duels to crown the funniest.
Two teams, one rope, one beat: keep time and drag the ratchet your way.
Vote your team through a maze race. Majority rules, literally.
It is almost never the game. Every phone holds one lightweight connection and sends a few bytes when somebody taps, so the number that decides whether a hall is comfortable is the access-point count rather than the bandwidth: one router at the back of a function room will struggle with sixty phones long before the internet line does.
The second thing is sightlines. The display keeps the room together, so anyone who cannot read it is playing a different game from everyone else. In a long room that usually means a bigger font rather than a bigger screen: put the display where the back row can read a four-letter code, and the rest of the layout follows.
Two to twenty in a normal party. We have tested tournament mode with a hundred players.
There is no app. Every phone joins in a browser with a four-letter code or a QR scan.
One screen the group can see and a wifi connection. A television, a laptop or a projector all work.
No. Heats run at the same time, so the whole room is playing the same game in parallel.
They rejoin with the same four letters and come back to their own seat, team and score. A phone that locks itself in a pocket is a disconnect the room never notices.
One game is three to thirteen minutes including its own explanation. Five or six games with the talking in between is a comfortable two hours.
Rooms above fifty get a branded party, the tournament ladder and a person on the day.
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