Real-time multiplayer board game

The client wanted a multiplayer board game with a real economy: matchmaking with strangers or friends, coins and diamonds bought with real money, a weekly league and referrals. Because money moves on every game, a modified app must never be able to cheat.

Everything is real-time. Rolls, moves, turn timers, disconnects, cancelled matches and payouts all have to stay correct when many players act at the same moment, on a single server.

• A server-authoritative engine: the app only sends intents (roll, move, undo), and the server checks every move against 3 rule variants and broadcasts the legal moves.
• Socket.IO matchmaking for 5 modes with bot fill, and race-safe cancels: the fee is charged only after a full match, with refunds and re-queueing on a late cancel.
• The React Native app: animated board, 30-second turn timer, auto-play, paid undo, chat and emojis, and reconnecting within a 5-minute grace period.
• The economy: Stripe Checkout credited exactly once, level-based house fees, coin transfers, weekly league payouts, bounty chests and referral commission.
• Admin panel work, including accurate dashboard money metrics: table fees, transfer fees, Stripe revenue and online players.
• Deployment on a Linux VPS with Nginx, PM2 and a GitHub Actions pipeline with a /health gate and automatic rollback.

A complete game across mobile, server and admin, with 300 players playing at the same time on one server and zero errors.