pixperk

pixperk / pastel

Public

guess, chat, talk and draw with friends and bots — rust, typescript, binary websockets

playpastel.com
17
1
100% credibility
Found Jun 01, 2026 at 17 stars -- GitGems finds repos before they trend. Get early access to the next one.
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AI Analysis
Rust
AI Summary

Pastel is a free, no-account multiplayer drawing and guessing game where you share a simple link with friends and take turns sketching words while others race to guess them. It runs entirely in your browser with no downloads, includes optional voice chat, AI opponents that draw real human sketches, and tracks scores across rounds. The whole experience fits in a browser tab with soft background music and colorful avatars.

How It Works

1
🎨 Someone shares a pastel link

A friend sends you a short link to a multiplayer drawing game. No signup needed, just click and you're in.

2
🏠 You land on the colorful homepage

The page welcomes you with soft music and a simple choice: start a new room or join an existing one with a code.

3
😊 You pick your look

Choose a fun avatar with customizable skin, hair, eyes, and accessories. Your browser remembers it for next time.

4
🎯 You create or join a room

As the host, you pick a game length (quick 3-round sprint or marathon) and share the link. Friends join with your room code.

5
✏️ Everyone takes turns drawing

When it's your turn, pick a word from options and draw it on the shared canvas while others guess in the chat.

6
🤔 Hints reveal as time runs out

Struggling guessers get help as letters appear automatically at 60, 30, and 10 seconds remaining.

🏆 Scores add up and winners celebrate

Fast guessers earn more points, drawers get bonuses, and the final leaderboard crowns the champion with a fun podium animation.

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Star Growth

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AI-Generated Review

What is pastel?

Pastel is a real-time multiplayer drawing and guessing game -- think Skribbl.io but with no accounts, no ads, and a binary wire protocol instead of JSON. The backend runs on Rust with Axum for WebSocket handling and a custom postcard codec that keeps stroke batches to around 130 bytes versus 600 in JSON. Frontend is TypeScript with Vite, rendering dicebear avatars and a Bezier-smoothed canvas.

Why is it gaining traction?

The hook is the feature density: built-in voice chat via LiveKit, bots that replay actual human sketches from Google Quick Draw (not fake AI guessing), and a lofi soundtrack that transitions between scenes. The reload-safety mechanic means refreshing your browser does not drop you from a game or lose your score. For devs evaluating it, the wire protocol and per-room actor architecture are documented with hard numbers -- 200 concurrent players sustained on a single Cloud Run instance with p99 latency under 2ms at realistic stroke rates.

Who should use this?

Backend engineers building real-time multiplayer features will find the actor-per-room pattern and binary codec worth studying. Teams wanting to self-host a casual game night tool will appreciate the Docker image and Cloud Run deployment docs. Frontend developers curious about Rust-WebSocket interop can run the load test tool to stress-test their own infrastructure. Projects needing a whiteboard or Pictionary clone should start here rather than building from scratch.

Verdict

At 17 stars and a 1.0% credibility score this is early-stage, but the test coverage (75+ Rust tests, load test harness with real HdrHistogram data, production metrics) signals it is not a toy. Worth evaluating for hobby projects or as a reference implementation, but the single-instance topology and Turso dependency mean you will outgrow it faster than expected. Start here if you want working code; build your own if you need enterprise scale.

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