About Jokers & Marbles

Jokers & Marbles is a free online version of the marble and card game families have been playing around kitchen tables for generations — the one you might know as Pegs and Jokers.

It exists because the game is genuinely good and there was nowhere decent to play it.

Where it came from

This is a family game before it is a website. The rules here are one family’s rules, written down properly rather than averaged out into a version nobody actually plays: the backward 8, the split 7 and 9, the joker that reaches anywhere on the board, and the partner you help by landing on.

The rule that shaped everything else is the penalty for playing out of turn — you lose that card and your turn. That is why the board never greys out when it is not your turn. Every other online board game locks the controls and waits for you; this one leaves the table live and trusts you to know whose turn it is, which is exactly how it works in person.

What it is trying to be

Fast to start and impossible to get wrong. No download, no account to open a game, no tutorial to sit through. Open the page and you are playing; send a link and your friends are at the same table a few seconds later.

The game itself is complete and free. Everything sold is cosmetic — marble finishes, avatar costumes, board skins — and none of it touches the rules. A game that sells advantages stops being the game, and this one is meant to stay the game.

How it is built

The rules live in a single shared engine that both your browser and the server run, so a move is judged the same way in both places and the two cannot disagree about what is legal.

That engine is tested by having the game play itself thousands of times and checking every move it generates against the move it actually applies. It is an unglamorous way to build a board game and it is the reason the rules behave the same on the thousandth turn as on the first.

Who made it

Jokers & Marbles is built by Nathan Katzaroff. It is a small, independent project — not a studio, not a publisher, and not backed by anyone.

Bugs, rules disputes and suggestions are all welcome, and they reach a person rather than a queue.