# Last Card Standing

> A free, no-install, browser-based 108-card shedding card game. Solo vs
> 2–4 deterministic AI bots, OR live multiplayer with friends over
> WebSocket. Action cards, "Last!" calls, custom-rule toggles, full
> replay-validated scoring, real-time chat.

Site: https://tglgames.com/
Play: https://tglgames.com/last-card-standing/
Design doc: https://tglgames.com/docs/last-card-standing.md

## What it is

Last Card Standing is a shedding card game built from public-domain
mechanics — color-and-rank matching, action cards (skip / reverse /
draw-2), wilds, wild-draw-4, and a "go out" call when you're down to
one card. The slogan is **One card. Outlast them all.** Free, no
signup, no install.

## Mechanics

- **Deck**: 108 cards. Four colors (red / yellow / green / blue), each
  with 0–9 plus skip / reverse / draw-2. Plus 4 wilds and 4 wild-draw-4s.
- **Hand**: 7 cards dealt to start.
- **Play**: match the top card by color or rank, or play a wild. Action
  cards trigger immediate effects:
  - **Skip** — next player's turn is skipped.
  - **Reverse** — direction of play flips.
  - **Draw-2** — next player draws 2 and is skipped.
  - **Wild** — re-pick the active color.
  - **Wild Draw 4** — re-pick color, next player draws 4 and is skipped.
- **Last!**: when you go down to one card you must call **Last!** before
  any other player notices. Forget and they can call you out for a
  2-card penalty.
- **Round-end**: first player to go out wins the round and scores the
  total point value of every other player's hand.
- **Run**: each round is its own game. After a round ends you choose to
  play another or stop. Stop = the run is submitted to the leaderboard.
  No 500-point cap, no fixed round count — you stop when you're done.

## Modes

- **Solo** — vs 2 / 3 / 4 deterministic AI bots, chosen at run-start.
- **Friend match (live multiplayer)** — host with an 8-character invite
  code or send a DM friend invite; anywhere from 2 to total seats can
  be human, with bots filling any vacant seat. WebSocket-driven; full
  match state is server-authoritative.
- **Hosts can kick** mid-game (the kicked seat converts to a real `*_bot`
  user account so the table keeps playing).

## Multiplayer details

- Single Workerman PHP WebSocket service at `/ws/lcs`.
- Server-authoritative match state; clients cannot fabricate plays.
- Match chat is shared with the rest of the site's chat infrastructure
  (`room_type='match'`), so reactions / edits / history work like any
  other room.
- Real DB-backed `*_bot` user accounts fill empty seats and naturally
  appear on leaderboards (filterable via `hide_bots=1`, on by default).

## Anti-cheat / replay

- HMAC-signed run tokens; single-use.
- Mulberry32 PRNG drives the shuffle + every AI decision; deterministic
  given the seed + the human action sequence.
- Server replays the full action stream against the seed and rejects any
  run whose score doesn't match. The "AI version" in use at submit time
  is recorded so old replays still validate after AI tuning.

## Controls

- **Mouse / touch**: tap a card in your hand to play it; tap the draw
  pile to draw; tap **Last!** when you're down to one card.
- **Keyboard**: D = draw, Space = pass (when applicable), U = call Last!,
  Enter = next round, 1–9 = play a card by hand-position.
- **Color picker** appears when you play a wild; click your color of
  choice (or use the on-screen color buttons).

## Optional rules ("seed" toggles)

The drawer's "Game seed" panel exposes optional rule modifiers. Each
unique combo is its own leaderboard, so a vanilla run never competes
against a "Stack Draw 2s" run. Examples:

- `draw-til-playable` — keep drawing until you hit a playable card.
- `auto-play-single` — auto-fire your only-playable card after a brief
  delay.

The active rule combo is canonicalised + stored as the `ruleset` value.

## Privacy / signup

- No account required for solo. Friend matches need a registered handle
  (so the invite system can route to a stable user_id).
- No tracking pixels, no analytics SDK, no third-party scripts.

## Genre / keywords

shedding card game, browser card game, free online shedding game, html5
card game, multiplayer card game, real-time card game, last card,
action cards, mobile card game, custom rules, jump-in, no-mercy mode,
mgwalk, tglgames.com

## Author

mgwalk — https://tglgames.com/