Table Mesh lets a group of friends play a board game together at a real table,
each on their own phone. The phones find each other over Bluetooth (and Wi-Fi
when there is one) and form a small mesh: no internet, no server, no sign-up,
and no phone is the host. Every phone runs the game's rules itself and only the
moves travel, so a game keeps going when a phone sleeps, drops out or restarts —
it catches up from the others when it comes back. A tablet in the middle can
show the whole board.
Included: Mensch ärgere Dich nicht — the German family classic for 2–4
players, with the full rules, table dice or your own real dice, a referee
override, bots to play against on your own, an in-game rulebook and tour, and
a full-screen table view for the tablet.
More games from Nostr. Games are small sandboxed modules, and every game
is a signed Nostr event (kind 7529) naming one archive of its files.
Discover shows the games of the Table Mesh publisher and, with your Nostr
key, those of the people you follow — looked up on the relays each publisher
names — and downloads them from Blossom servers, checking every byte against
the signed release before it is installed. Updates come only from the
publisher who made the game. A game module has no network access and no
storage: it can only receive moves and propose moves.
Devices nearby. While the app is open, phones on the same Wi-Fi see which
games the others have. Ask for one, the other person taps Share, and it
comes over the Wi-Fi network, checked against its publisher's signature.
Without any network, hand a game to a friend's phone over Bluetooth: they tap
Receive a game, you pick the game and their phone, they accept. Game files
can also be sent by hand, over e-mail or a chat.
Your Nostr key, if you want one. No key is needed to play, or to read the
Table Mesh community on Nostr — one public group with a forum and a chat.
With your key — created in the app and backed up as an encrypted ncryptsec,
imported, or kept in Amber or a remote signer — you can talk there and edit
your Nostr profile; with it, or just your npub, Discover shows games from
the people you follow. The app holds your key for itself only and never signs
for other apps.
No Google, no tracking. Nothing to sign up for, no ads, no analytics, no
Google Play Services.
When something goes wrong, you see it. Every phone keeps the whole game
history, hash-chained. If two phones ever disagree, the table turns red and a
person decides which history to keep — nothing is merged behind your back.
This is an early release. The Bluetooth mesh has been tested extensively in
simulation and on emulators; reports from real tables with several phones are
very welcome.