The AI Ronin Works · Work #004 · Completed / Live

DERBY NIGHT

A Party Horse Racing Game.

Race. Bet. Laugh. Repeat.

Gather two to ten friends around one screen. Study the field, place your bets and watch the race play out — then argue about it until the next one starts.

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No AccountNo CloudNo API100% Local

2–10 players · one screenBest on a laptop, tablet or phone held in landscape. Nothing to install.

The DERBY NIGHT title screen, showing the Quick Start and Owner’s Race modes

The idea

Game night needed a race.

Party games are at their best when everyone is watching the same thing at the same time. DERBY NIGHT puts eight horses on one screen, gives everyone a stake in the outcome and lets the race do the rest.

There is no app to install and no account to make. Pass the device around, lock in your picks and watch it run. The whole night — balances, tickets and results — lives in your browser and nowhere else.

Everyone picks. Everyone watches. Only one of you gets to be smug about it.

The game

Study the field. Place the bet. Watch it run.

Every race follows the same rhythm — meet the horses, back your pick, then watch the field come down the stretch.

DERBY NIGHT title screen with two game modes

Choose your night

Two modes: Quick Start or Owner’s Race.

Meet the horses

Running style and personality for every runner.

Betting screen with Win, Exacta Box and Trifecta Box ticket types

Place your bets

Win, Exacta Box and Trifecta Box tickets.

The race in progress with live running order and commentary

And they’re off

Live running order and race-by-race commentary.

Two ways to play

One party, two kinds of night.

Quick Start

Pick your favourites from an established field of horses. Everyone starts on the same points, backs their runners across three to ten races and the balance sheet settles the argument.

Owner’s Race

Name your own horse, choose its colours and enter it against your friends. Each race you give a private tactical instruction, set a prize target and stake your points — then everything is revealed at once.

Owner’s Race · private call

Tactical instruction, prize target and stake — hidden until the reveal.

What is in it

Built for a room, not a leaderboard.

2–10 players

Everyone plays from the same screen. Pass it around and keep going.

3 to 10 races

A quick three-race night or a full ten-race Derby Night.

Three ticket types

Win, Exacta Box and Trifecta Box, with payouts scaled to the field.

Running styles

Front Runner, Pace Setter, Closer and Deep Closer all race differently.

Personalities

Calm, Fearless, Cautious and Unpredictable change how a race unfolds.

Photo finishes

Official results down to a nose, with replays of the closest calls.

Local-first architecture

No account. No cloud. No external API.

DERBY NIGHT runs entirely in the browser. The night in progress — players, tickets, balances and results — is stored locally on the device, so there is no backend service, external database or account system. Close the tab and pick the same night back up later.

StoragelocalStorage

BackendNone

DatabaseNone

External APINone

Built with

Small stack, real game.

A static build with the race rendered in the browser and every image and sound served from the page itself.

ReactTypeScriptVitethree.jsCanvas 2DWeb Audio APIlocalStorageCloudflare Pages

The experiment

Built with AI. Settled by a photo finish.

DERBY NIGHT is Work #004 in The AI Ronin Works — an experiment in using AI to build a complete browser game that needs no AI at runtime, and no connection once it has loaded.

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