Free online Mao, except the secret rules aren't invented by a smug winner. They're invented and enforced by the General: an AI that watches every play, issues penalties in cryptic form, and never, ever explains. Everyone sits down blind. You deduce the law one penalty card at a time.
No signup. No downloads. Free forever. 2 to 6 to a table.
"The only rule I may tell you is this one."
Everything else is secret, generated fresh, and enforced in silence.
It looks like an ordinary shedding game: match the rank or the suit, empty your hand to win. That is the part you're allowed to know.
Break a hidden law and a penalty card slides into your hand. The General names your sin, but only the category: "improper address," never what address was correct.
The ledger fills. You argue in chat. Slowly, together, you infer the laws you're being punished by, until someone goes out and the record is finally read aloud.
A human rulemaster always already knows the rules, which spoils it for them and makes it nearly impossible to play cold with strangers. The General removes the human. It is consistent to a fault: the same play in the same state draws the same penalty, every time. Mystery comes from hidden-but-fixed laws, never from randomness.
It congratulates no one. It occasionally says "Correct." and nothing else, which is somehow worse.
A complete, unknown ruleset. Nobody knows anything. Maximum Mao. The default.
Victorian Court. Superstition. The Ministry. Pick the flavor; you still don't know the rules.
The rules are shown. Not really Mao anymore, but the on-ramp for anyone who's never shed a card.
Author a devious ruleset in plain English. The General structures and enforces it, and never reveals it. Watch your trap spring.
No. The host convenes a table, shares a six-character code, and friends join on any device with a browser. An optional magic-link login is offered only after your first game, never before.
Fair, by construction. The rules engine is deterministic and heavily tested: the same game state and the same secret ruleset always produce the same penalty. Before a match, the ruleset is validated for consistency, so the General is lawful evil, never chaotic.
No. The secret ruleset lives only on the server, inside the table's own process. It is never sent to any client, not in game state, not in error strings, not in penalty reasons. A test captures every outbound message across a full match and asserts the rules never appear.
Not in a Classic match. That isn't a missing feature; that's the entire game.
Nothing. It's a personal project, free forever, no ads during play, no paywalls. If you feel moved to it, you can buy the General a coffee. The General does not drink coffee, but accepts the tribute.