Classic Games Hub · by Yash Mathur
I kept seeing clever twists on childhood games on social media, and had nobody around to play them with and nowhere online to try them. So I built Classic Games Hub: five takes on tic-tac-toe you can play in the browser with a friend, against the computer, or in an online room.
Why it exists
Plain tic-tac-toe almost always ends in a draw. The twists keep the simple rules and the old feeling, but you no longer know how it ends, which makes it worth playing again.
The games
Classic & Anti
Classic is the 3×3 game from every school notebook: get three in a row. Anti uses the same board with the goal turned upside down: if you make three of your own in a row, you lose.
Play Classic on Classic Games Hub Play Anti on Classic Games Hub
Stack
Each player gets six pieces: two large, two medium and two small. A bigger piece can cover a smaller one, even your opponent’s, and only the pieces on top count towards three in a row.
Vanishing
You can only have three pieces on the board. Place a fourth and your oldest one disappears. The piece that goes next turns grey, so you can see the board changing under you. With six pieces at most on nine squares, the board never fills up.
Ultimate
The board is nine small boards in a 3×3 grid. Where you play inside a small board decides which small board your opponent has to play in next. Win a small board to claim it, and claim three in a row to win.
Two players, one phone or tablet, taking turns.
For when there’s nobody around to play with.
Create a room, share the code, and a friend joins from their own device.
Play as a guest straight away. Signing in just shows your name to people you play online.
The demo
Plays from YouTube when you press play. Open on YouTube
How I built it · 2024
The twists I saw online looked like the perfect mix: simple, exciting, and still true to the games I grew up with. I couldn’t find a single place to play them with friends or strangers, so I made one.
I found the idea in social media trends, then checked it with friends and looked at how much people engaged with similar games before writing any code.
I gave it a warm, playful, slightly 3D wooden look, wrote the game logic in React and Next.js, and used Firebase for live multiplayer so there was no server to run.
Local two-player and computer modes came first, then online rooms. It deploys to Vercel, and I keep an eye on its search metrics to help people find it.
Classic Games Hub is a free web app for playing modern twists on childhood games in the browser. Right now it has five takes on tic-tac-toe: Classic, Anti, Stack, Vanishing and Ultimate. You play it at classicgameshub.com.
Yash Mathur, a product engineer. He designed and built it himself in 2024, after seeing these game twists on social media and finding nowhere online to play them with other people.
It is free and runs in your browser, with nothing to download. You can play as a guest; signing in only shows your name to the people you play with online.
Yes. You can pass and play with a friend on one device, play against the computer, or create an online room and share its code so a friend can join from their own device.
The games are written in React and Next.js. Live multiplayer runs on Firebase, so there is no game server to manage, and the site is deployed on Vercel.
At classicgameshub.com. This page is the story behind it; the games themselves, their rules and their FAQs all live on the Classic Games Hub site.
Grab a friend, or take on the computer.
Play at classicgameshub.com