डेवलपर ब्लॉग

Public Beta 0.8.2

Thank You to saevusstudios2.0

The Architect AKA @saevusstudios2.0 released the video Indie Games Compilation [Daily Grapple | Seven Spell | Firefront | Pachisi] on October 02 2026. Featuring Pachisi Reimagined, where he played a full game. Please check out the video and show him support. Full Video | Youtube Channel.

Progression Score Tracking UI

Each checkpoint (castles and entering tiles) now have 5 markers / outlines, one on each side of the rectangle and one outlining the center circle or start graphic. Each marker corresponds with a game piece, the outer outlines correspond to Guards while the inner graphic corresponds to the Noble. These markers represent unclaimed progression score, and when you or your opponents land on a checkpoint tile, the markers will disappear. Since Pachisi Reimagined is a perfect information game, you can view your opponents progression score trackers by clicking on their checkpoint view button (the eye icon under their score card). This UI change is designed to make it easier to observe and predict progression scoring.

Pausing the Game

The in game settings menu now has an option to pause the game, which will pause gameplay and sound.

Early finish system

The in game settings menu now has a "Request early finish" button. The basic premise is, if a player wants to end the game early, they inform the bots of this request, the bots have proprietary logic to determine if they are happy with their current placement or not. The bots can either agree or disagree, if all the bots agree then the player can end the game early and keep their current placement, if any of the bots disagree then the player will have to either keep playing or forfeit in 4th place.

The Store is Live

The Store is now live! You can now buy game pieces, the Chess Pawn designs and the Battle Cat designs are purchasable so that you can use them yourself. The store is powered by Stripe, the "Superior" pieces are $2.99 USD and the "Rare" pieces are $3.99 USD. Stripe converts the purchase price to your local currency at checkout. There is a 14 day Refund Policy that is self service, so if you are unhappy with your purchase just go to your Account Purchases page and you can refund the purchase yourself. Pachisi Reimagined / scrimtera.com is currently self-funded and developed independently by a single person (myself - Justin). The Store Page is currently the game's only source of revenue. Every purchase directly supports the continued development of Pachisi Reimagined and helps cover the hosting and operating expenses of scrimtera.com. Since no one likes exploitative pricing, I've kept things simple. Game pieces are available for a flat price of either $2.99 or $3.99, with no in-game currency or complicated pricing systems. If you decide to make a purchase, the game piece will be permanently unlocked on your account and available for you to use in-game.

Some Extra Notes About Supporting Scrimtera

My current goal is increasing daily active users and monthly active users in order to make multiplayer viable. Obviously, I will be very happy if you decide to support by purchasing a game piece in the shop. However currently I am most interested in the social media following, new users, and eyeballs on the website / game in general. There is still a lot of growth that can happen to this site: single player leaderboards, multiplayer, multiplayer rankings, chat / community features, and more. But all of this relies on a having more players and a larger community. Obviously, as the community grows, and multiplayer servers are added to the mix, operating expenses will increase. There will be a point where I will no longer be able to cover all the operating expenses myself, and the in-game purchases will become essential the the survival of Pachisi Reimagined. All this to say, if you would like to support Pachisi Reimagined, please give me a follow, share, like, etc on social media! Growing the community will benefit us all!

New Opponent Names

All the bots were renamed. I did this in order to lean more into the fantasy theming of the site, and these names are more professional in general.

AI Assistant

I created an AI assistant. Basically, the AI assistant has access to the Game Manual, the Information Pages, and This Blog. It can answer questions based on this data and nothing else. It will refuse questions that are not related to Scrimtera / Pachisi Reimagined.

Why Create an AI Assistant?

One of the biggest hurdles facing Pachisi Reimagined is onboarding new users. There are a few factors at play:

1. People who are already familiar with Pachisi / Ludo may think that Pachisi Reimagined is just another Ludo game, with the same simple mechanics as the classic game. They will not be interested in Pachisi Reimagined because they don't think it is a real tactical / strategy game.
2. People who are familiar with Pachisi / Ludo might find Pachisi Reimagined overwhelming. Pachisi Reimagined is currently the most unique Ludo style game on the market. Pachisi Reimagined is also tactical, requires real strategy, and has a higher cognitive load than any other Ludo style game on the market. People who are familiar with or play Ludo King or Parchisi STAR Online may expect Pachisi Reimagined to be a similar experience, while in reality my game is much more difficult to learn and master.
3. Hurdle 2 also applies to players who are not familiar with Ludo style games. There are mechanics to learn and nuances to know about if you want to play Pachisi Reimagined optimally. Any new player to the game may get frustrated and quit if they cannot grasp the core concepts or are getting dominated by the bots.

• Basically I need a way to onboard new players effectively, and give as many different methods to learn the game as possible. The methods I have are:
• The Game Manual (released). The authoritative source of the game rules, written by myself. The downside is that it is lengthy and can take a long time to read it all.
• The AI Assistant (released). Able to answer any specific questions players may have, and able to cite the Game Manual. Should be a faster method for players to get relevant information. The downsides are that it can potentially be wrong, and that it costs me money because I am using the Chat GPT API.
• Interface Guide (not released). I haven't fully fleshed this feature out yet. But basically I am thinking of a simple list style guide that has screenshots of in-game UI elements. Then next to the screenshot there will be a short description of what that element does.
• New Player Tooltips (not released). Players playing their first game will have tooltips that pop up, and explain certain aspects of the game. Players will have the option to re-enable the tooltips after the first game if they would like.
• Interactive Tutorial (not released). Full interactive tutorial that plays kind of like a regular game.
• So the basic answer to Why Create an AI Assistant is: onboarding new players. All of these methods are not set in stone, I may remove or modify any of these onboarding tools.

Expanded out-of-game Sound Controls

You can now access the full sound controls on the index page and the home page, not just the toggle.

Public Beta 0.8.1

Giving Journey a Time Limit

Pachisi Reimagined is a modern version of the ancient game of Pachisi, built for a modern audience. The target demographic for this game, including myself, doesn't have time or doesn't want to play a 1-hour+ long game. This is why I made the decision to limit Journey games to 30 minutes. Brawl remains 10 minutes. As a result, I had to make Journey faster paced, so that the game would have meaningful gameplay within the shorter time span. Since Brawl is a faster paced game than Journey, I also had to increase the pace of Brawl. All the rule changes that you will see below are related to these initial time limit and pacing changes. As a result, I believe that both game modes are more fun and engaging than they were before.

Increased Dice Counts

This rule has not changed: The number of dice you roll depends on how many rolls are already stored. What changed is how many dice you get at each store size. This creates faster gameplay because players are able to move their game pieces further each turn.

Before

Journey

After

Journey

Faster Noble Movement

In order for the Noble to keep up with its Guards, the Noble's selectable movement range is now 1–8 spaces, up from 1–6.

Start With Three Exit Credits

All players in both game modes now start with 3 exit credits instead of 2. This increases the pace of the early game, and gives players more starting move options.

Total Score Model

There are now 3 scoring systems that both game modes use: Progression Score, Combat Score, and Bonuses. Total Score is the sum of these three scores.

Scoring Weights

Progression Score is more important in Journey, Combat Score is more important in Brawl. See the tables below to see how the point values are skewed. These scoring weights allow for both scoring systems to exist in both game modes, while also keeping a distinction between the game modes. Players will prioritize the primary scoring system, but the secondary scoring system is also present, allowing for unique gameplay options.

Progression Score

• Progression points are awarded to each game piece individually.
• Progression points are awarded when a piece reaches a checkpoint, the checkpoints are: Your own Entering tile, Castles, other players Entering tile, your Midpoint, and Home.
• Checkpoints award Progression points once per cycle, per piece. The cycle is reset when your pieces midpoint status transitions from inactive to active. Meaning, if your piece does not have Midpoint Glow, and you reach the midpoint, and your piece starts glowing, you just reset your cycle. But if your piece is already glowing, and you reach your midpoint again, your cycle will not be reset again.
• If your piece(s) are captured, they lose all progression score. Being captured does not reset your Progression score cycle, those pieces will have to reach the midpoint in order to reset their cycle.
• The table shows the Progression Score weights, you get more Progression points in Journey than Brawl. | Progression checkpoint | Journey Guard / Noble | Brawl Guard / Noble | | --- | ---: | ---: | | Own entering tile | +10 / +20 | +5 / +10 | | Each Castle | +20 / +40 | +10 / +20 | | Other entering tile | +30 / +60 | +20 / +40 | | Midpoint | +50 / +100 | +30 / +60 | | Home | +100 / +200 | +50 / +100 |

Combat Score

• The Brawl scoring model largely remains unchanged, it is now called Combat Score, and it is in both game modes.
• The location of your Noble at the time of capture still determines how many Combat points you get per piece captured. Nobles give you more points than guards.
• The table shows the Combat Score weights, you get more Combat points in Brawl than Journey. | Capturing Noble's location | Journey Guard / Noble captured | Brawl Guard / Noble captured | | --- | ---: | ---: | | Safe space (Yard, own entering tile, Home path, or Home) | +10 / +20 | +20 / +50 | | Castle before midpoint | +20 / +30 | +50 / +100 | | Regular tile before midpoint | +30 / +40 | +100 / +150 | | Castle after midpoint | +40 / +50 | +150 / +200 | | Regular tile after midpoint | +50 / +60 | +200 / +250 |

Blockade Penalties

• Blockade penalties now exist in both game modes, not just Brawl.
• Journey blockade penalties subtract 5 combat points per trimmed movement step, Brawl subtracts 15. Making blockade penalties more impactful in Brawl.

Bonuses

• The only bonus as of the time of this blog post is Completion Bonus.
• The Completion Bonus only exists in Journey.
• You get a Completion Bonus for bringing all 5 of your game pieces Home in Journey, before the clock expires.
• First player to bring all 5 pieces home gets +100, followed by +75, +50, and +25.
• This makes it so players who bring all 5 game pieces home within the time limit will get this bonus, increasing their chances of winning if they are first to do so.

Ending a Journey Game

Since Journey now has a 30 minute timer, there are now 2 ways to end a Journey game. The first being the original method, if all four players bring all of their game pieces home, the game is over. And the new method, when the 30 minute timer is up, the game is over. In both end of game methods, total score determines final rankings.

New UI

Game Event Notifications

These notifications appear in these scenarios: checkpoint gains, progression lost on capture, completion bonuses, combat captures, blockade penalties, and a Noble blocked by its owner's Guards.

Player Card

The Player Cards now displays each players score breakdowns. Total Score, Progression Score, Bonuses.

Bot Changes

Each game mode's listed single player roster grew from 16 bots to 22. All bots were updated and tested to make sure they are playing according to the new rules.

Big Whip

Big Whip is a new and free, on device bot engine for both Journey and Brawl. Its six Journey bots are Dexter, Leet, Tanush, Kaileen, Sponge, and Baby-prince; its six Brawl bots are Sandy, Banker, Vama, Shadow, Kathy, and Big-chungus.

Traversing

Previously, the premium bots were the bots that utilized Claude Sonnet and GPT-5.4 Mini. Now the premium bots are the Traversing bots. Turns out that LLMs are not useful at all when it comes to making gameplay decisions for Pachisi Reimagined. Before this change we were generating possible gameplay decisions on the client, then sending the decisions to the server / LLM, and the LLM would make the final decision. We are now generating possible gameplay decisions on the client, sending those decisions to the server, and the server has custom hard coded logic that makes the final decision. After extensive testing, the hard coded logic out performs the LLM decision making, and LLMs take longer, basically proving that it was a bad approach. A fun experiment, but not ideal. I believe that this approach will only be beneficial if the backend LLM is specifically trained on Pachisi Reimagined game data, a general purpose LLM does not cut it.

Background music

• All tracks are fantasy themed.
• The tracks that play in game are different than the tracks that play out of game. The music will automatically transition when you start a game.
• Track order is randomly chosen.
• You must enable sound on the index page, the home page, or in game. You can adjust volume in the game settings menu.
• This is the background music I chose: IRONLORE - Fantasy Music Pack

Bug Fixes

• Capturing a Noble no longer captures the owner's Guards that have reached their Home Path or Home. This means, if you move your guard(s) to a Home Path tile or the Home tile, those guards will be completely safe, if your Noble is captured, those guards will remain Home. Guard pieces that are in play and not on a Home tile will be captured along with your Noble, that rule has not changed.

Public Beta 0.7.6

Background images

There are now 6 background images, each has a light mode and a dark mode variant. The background image is randomly chosen on page load, so if you refresh the page you may get a new background image.

Accessibility Tweaks

Some of the navigation buttons and labels were out of spec with WCAG 2.2 Level AA, updates were made to fix this.

In game UI updates

Big changes were made to the in game UI.

• There are three themes: Walnut & Brass (default), Gunmetal & Nickel, and Imperial Violet & Pale Gold. Each theme has light mode and dark mode versions.
• These items are all now contained within a decorative border: round tracker, game clock, roll dispatcher, turn order indicator, game manual button, settings button.
• The piece interaction buttons are now inside their own decorative border as well.
• On mobile / portrait screens, the borders will sit above and below the game board. On desktop / landscape screens, the borders will sit on the left and right sides of the game board.

Persistent settings

"Appearance," "Theme," and "Animation Speed" can be changed while in game. "Appearance" (light or dark mode) can be changed out of game as well, as it always has been. All these settings are now saved in your browsers local storage. Meaning your settings will be saved for that browser, if you change browsers or clear your browser data, you will lose those saved setting and reset to the default.

Premium for Free

• The temporary beta promotion described in this post has ended.

For people who like faster gameplay!

Public Beta 0.7.5

Change the animation speed in game

As part of my pursuit to make Pachisi Reimagined more customizable and give the players more options, I have created a way to increase the animation speeds.
The options are: 1x (default), 2x, 3.5x, and 5x

How to do this:

• While in game, click on the settings button (the gear icon).
• Click on the "Animation Speed" option.
• From there you will be able to make your selection.
• The changes apply at the start of the next turn. This is safer / less bug prone vs. applying the animation speed changes immediately.

I hope you enjoy!

Greetings!
Thank you for visiting scrimtera.com!
Thank you for playing Pachisi Reimagined, I hope that you enjoy it!
Player feedback is very important to me, I want to make Pachisi Reimagined as good as possible. If you have any bugs, issues, suggestions, comments, please let me know via https://scrimtera.com/contact.

Some General Information

• My name is Justin.
• Gistyr LLC d/b/a Scrimtera is a single member LLC. Meaning I am the sole member of the company.
• I started working on Pachisi Reimagined in October 2024. So it took about 1 year and 9 months to get from nothing to public beta.
• I am the solo developer, manager, and any other title, at least for now, I have full control over everything.

Some Personal Information

• Gistyr LLC has not made a profit yet, I work full time elsewhere.
• My full time job is in the tech sector somewhat.
• I knew how to program and other tech related stuff before I started this project.
• My biggest struggle will probably be marketing. I literally have zero personal social media accounts (I made accounts for Scrimtera).

Some Technical Information:

• scrimtera.com is a Next.js application hosted by Vercel.
• By code quantity, most of scrimtera.com is written in Rust and compiled to WASM. When it comes to the actual Pachisi Reimagined game, all of the game logic and state is written in Rust, Rust emits events to TypeScript to update the UI.
• Backend services are done with Cloudflare workers.
• The primary database is managed by Supabase.
• That is pretty much it for the core components of the tech stack, I like to keep things as simple as possible.

Timeline for new Features:

Since I am a solo developer, it is very hard for me to give concrete timelines. I have a full time job and have responsibilities IRL. I work on Scrimtera as often as possible, and I really enjoy working on it. But ultimately all development of Scrimtera is bound to myself and my free time.

The Largest Future Project

Multiplayer

I would love to have players playing players, and a ranked ladder, instead of just bots. But in order for this to work, there needs to be more users. This is why I launched with just single player against bots. If this game gets a following and I have real users, then I will start implementing multiplayer.

Large Project Currently in Development

Monetization of game pieces

• Currently players get and are able to use the six standard game pieces, you may notice that the bots are able to also use the chess pawn and cat game pieces.
• The six standard game pieces will continue to be free and will be default for all players.
• I would like to monetize the chess pawn and cat game pieces. I will sell them for $2.99 or $3.99 depending on rarity.
• This is a large project because since this is the initial implementation of monetization, I have to set up all the commerce infrastructure. This means integrating Stripe, creating new database schema, creating new backend services to process the transactions, and creating a shop UI.

Some More Projects

• Better way to end the game early.
• Integrate the "speed button" which will increase or decrease the speed of the game.
• Add reduced motion setting in game.
• Roll store higher contrast.
• Better indication in regard to what roll is attached to what piece.
• When a game piece is selected, it should have a "shine" applied to it. And the color of the shine should contrast the game piece color.
• Graphic applied when pieces are on a Castle. Since pieces block the castle star icon so it's easy to forget that it is a Castle tile.

In Conclusion

There are even more projects than I listed, and I'm sure bugs and issues will come up as more people start to play. I am also now going to start spending more time on social media / marketing. All of the social media links are at: https://scrimtera.com/connect. Thank you!