About Sartaba Mind Games
A game site for the thinking mind. Not a platform, not a hub, a site for people who sit down at a board and actually think.
How It Started
It began about four years ago, not with a website, but with a chess AI agent.
We are software engineers who wanted to learn something genuinely new. Artificial intelligence and machine learning had always interested us, but we learn best by doing. So we asked ourselves: what is the most interesting thing we could build while learning those skills? Chess, a game we had loved our entire lives, was the obvious answer.
We built the AI from scratch, letting it learn through play rather than feeding it libraries of pre-recorded games. After roughly 200,000 games, it reached an ELO of around 1,200 to 1,400, a respectable level for a self-taught agent, and proof that the approach worked. There was even a working interface. But something about it did not feel ready, and the project went on the shelf.
About six months ago, we came back to it. We rebuilt the interface from the ground up. This time, it felt like something we were genuinely proud to share. And somewhere in that rebuild, a bigger idea took shape: not just a chess site, but a full mind game site, one place, one consistent experience, for the games we have always loved.
Who We Are
We are software engineers who grew up playing board games on a real board. Saturday afternoons around a table, rolling dice, arguing over the rules, learning how to lose gracefully and win without gloating. We are from a generation that played these games before screens were everywhere, and we still play them today, now with our own children.
We love technology. We love board games. Sartaba Mind Games is what happens when those two things meet.
The site is built by one person, with family serving as the most honest beta testers imaginable. There is no corporate team, no outside funding, no roadmap decided by committee. Just a genuine love of these games and a desire to share it.
What Makes This Different
There are better chess sites. There are sites with more games. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
What we offer is something bigger sites cannot easily replicate. A consistent experience across multiple games, switch from Chess to Backgammon to Walls and it feels like the same place, because it is. A self-learning AI that grows through play rather than pre-programmed databases. And the ability to actually listen to our users. We are small enough that when someone sends a suggestion or reports a bug, a real person reads it and decides what to do with it. That matters to us.
The Original Games
Sartaba Dominion is entirely our own. It started as a rough idea, something involving territory, soldiers, flags, objectives, and through iteration became a hex strategy game about controlling supply lines, holding positions, and besieging an enemy Nexus. We are proud of it, even knowing it will keep improving.
Walls is our own take on the wall-and-race genre, a game where the walls you place to slow your opponent are as limited and precious as your moves. It carries our design philosophy and our feel.
Both games are open to feedback. If you play them and have ideas, we want to hear from you.
The AI Philosophy
Our AI agents learn the way a person learns, by playing, making mistakes, and adapting. We did not load them with historical game databases or connect them to external engines. They start knowing the rules and nothing else, and they improve through experience.
The AI is, honestly, still learning. Think of it as a very dedicated opponent who shows up every day and gets a little better. We think that is more interesting than playing against a solved algorithm. Watching it grow is part of the point.
Who This Is For
We picture three kinds of people arriving at this site.
Someone in their 50s looking for a game they grew up with, wanting that familiar feeling with the convenience of a browser. Someone in their 30s who loves board games and wants to play with a friend across the world, without waiting for a free weekend. And families, parents teaching children the same games they learned as kids, building the same memories around a different kind of board.
If any of those sounds like you, welcome.
Where We Are Going
More games. More depth. A site where users feel they have a genuine voice in what gets built.
We want Sartaba Mind Games to grow into a community, one that shapes itself around the people who play here. We read every message. We take suggestions seriously. The site you see today reflects input from real players, and the site we are building tomorrow will too.