drawtui

A real-time multiplayer drawing & guessing game that runs entirely in your terminal — think Skribbl.io, rendered as a fast native TUI.

Requirements

The terminal renderer uses a native core over FFI, so you need one of:

• Node.js ≥ 26.3 — uses Node's node:ffi (drawtui launches it with --experimental-ffi for you), or
• Bun ≥ 1.1 — uses Bun's native FFI.

Plus a terminal that supports mouse events (most modern ones do).

Usage

Just run the client — it connects to the hosted game server automatically. It runs on whichever runtime you launch it with (Node 26.3+ or Bun), no extra install needed:

npx drawtui Alice    # via npm/Node — runs on node:ffi
bunx drawtui Alice   # via Bun

Prefer a permanent drawtui command? Install it globally:

npm install -g drawtui   # or: bun add -g drawtui
drawtui Alice

How to play

1. On launch you land in the lobby — create a room or join one with its 6-character code.
2. The first player in a room is the host. Once a second player joins, the host presses S to start the game.
3. Share the room code (press Ctrl+Y to copy it) so friends can join the same room.

Take turns drawing the secret word while everyone else guesses in chat.