SIDE PROJECTS

Things I've Built

Building weird ideas, tiny tools, and things that make me go "heck yeah."

ARCADE GAME

Super Melee

Super Melee is a browser-based space combat game inspired by the classic melee mode from Star Control II. The goal was to capture that pick-a-ship-and-fight experience but strip away all the friction — no downloads, no account needed, just open the site and jump straight into battle against AI opponents or friends online.

Building it meant diving into the original Ur-Quan Masters source code to understand the core mechanics, then using AI as a collaborator to translate those classic systems into TypeScript and React. The result is a faithful web-native port where human creative instincts handled gameplay feel and polish while AI handled the heavy lifting of code exploration and generation.

Visit Super Melee

STRATEGY GAME

Metasquares

Metasquares is a reimplementation of an abstract strategy game originally designed by puzzle master Scott Kim back in 1996. Players compete on an n×n grid, placing markers and scoring points by forming squares — the further apart the corners, the more points you earn. It rewards long-term planning over obvious moves, and tilted squares are fair game.

This started as a code challenge submission at work and became an excuse to explore a stack I'd been curious about: TanStack Start, Convex for serverless backend, Clerk for auth, and React Native with Expo for mobile. It runs as a cross-platform monorepo with shared game logic across web and mobile — basically the most elaborate excuse to play a board game I've ever made.

Visit Metasquares

PARTY GAME

The Wizard's Spell

The Wizard's Spell is a competitive word-crafting party game for 2–4 players that blends linguistic skill with psychological strategy. Players take turns adding one letter at a time to a growing "chant," each secretly working toward a hidden word they plan to cast using all accumulated letters.

What makes it unpredictable is the defiance mechanic — opponents can challenge you to prove your intended word is legitimate within 60 seconds. That turns every letter into both a clue and a potential bluff. Tactical adds, bold deceptions, and sudden defiance make each round feel genuinely different, even with the same group.

Visit The Wizard's Spell

PROFESSIONAL SITE

More on Patrick Graham

I keep a more professional corner of the internet at graham.tech — it's where I go deeper on projects I've shipped over the years, including game experiments, tools I've built for work, and writeups on the things that shaped how I think about software.

If you want the full picture — more projects, more context, and a bit more polish than this chaotic corner of the web — that's the place to go.

Learn about Patrick Graham