Terminal Games

Inspiration We wondered — what's the most frictionless way to play a game with someone? No downloads, no browser, no accounts. Just one command. Every developer already has a terminal, so we built an entire arcade that lives inside SSH. Connect from anywhere in the world, on any machine, and start playing instantly.

What it does Terminal Arcade is a multiplayer game platform that runs entirely over SSH. Users connect with a single command (ssh -p 2222 arcade.yourdomain.tech) and land in a beautifully styled terminal interface with 9 playable games across three categories:

Solo Games: Snake 🐍, Tetris 🧱, Minesweeper 💣 AI-Powered Games: Trivia 🧠, 20 Questions 🔮, Blackjack 🃏, Connect 4 🔴 — all powered by Google's Gemini AI Multiplayer: Snake Arena ⚔️ (battle royale with AI bots), Tic-Tac-Toe ❌ (vs minimax AI) No installation. No browser. No signup. Just SSH and play.

How we built it We built the server in Go using the Charmbracelet ecosystem — Wish handles the SSH server, Bubble Tea powers the interactive TUI framework, and Lip Gloss handles the styling. Each game is its own self-contained module with full keyboard controls and animated rendering.

For the AI games, we integrated Google Gemini to generate trivia questions on the fly, play as a sassy blackjack dealer, think of objects for 20 Questions, and compete against you in Connect 4 — all through natural, real-time conversation happening behind the scenes.

The entire app is a single Go binary that can be deployed anywhere and accessed from any terminal in the world.

Challenges we ran into Getting smooth, lag-free rendering over SSH — terminal rendering is unforgiving, every frame matters Designing AI game prompts that make Gemini behave like a fun game host rather than a generic chatbot Handling multiple concurrent SSH sessions without state leaking between players Making the TUI feel as polished as a GUI with just Unicode characters and ANSI colors Accomplishments that we're proud of Zero-friction onboarding: one command to play, works on any machine with a terminal 9 fully playable games with a cohesive, beautiful menu system Seamless Gemini integration that makes AI games feel alive and conversational The entire platform compiles to a single binary under 20MB What we learned The Charmbracelet ecosystem is incredibly powerful for building production-grade terminal apps Gemini's generative capabilities can be creatively applied beyond chatbots — as game engines, quiz masters, and opponents SSH is an underrated platform for building shared interactive experiences What's next for Terminal Arcade Online multiplayer — real players competing against each other over SSH Leaderboards and persistent player stats More Gemini-powered games (AI Dungeon-style text adventures, word games) Custom domain with public access for anyone to play

Built With

• charmbracelet-bubbles
• charmbracelet-bubbletea
• charmbracelet-lipgloss
• charmbracelet-wish
• go
• google-gemini
• ssh