Cribbage

About the game

Cribbage is a centuries-old card game of counting. Each hand, you and the computer receive six cards and throw two into the crib, an extra hand that scores for the dealer. Then you take turns laying cards and adding their values to a running total, scoring for making exactly 15 or 31, for pairs and for runs. Finally, each hand is counted, and the points are pegged on the cribbage board until someone reaches the end.

Here your opponent is a cartoon dealer who talks you through each step, and the game does all the counting for you, showing exactly where every point came from.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game made for the Arduboy, the open, credit-card-sized handheld with a tiny black-and-white screen: a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release. It runs here in Ardens, an Arduboy emulator compiled to WebAssembly. Click Play now and press Z to start a game.

F2 saves the full state of the emulator and F4 brings it back, so you can stop in the middle of a game. A gamepad works too. The game's messages are in English.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Whose crib is it? The two cards you throw score for the dealer. Throw good cards into your own crib and harmless ones into your opponent's.

Fives are special. So many cards count ten that a 5 often makes 15. Holding fives for the count is usually better than leading with them.

Watch the total. Making 15 or 31 scores two points, and leaving your opponent unable to play also scores. Holding X shows where the count stands.

Credits and licence

Cribbage was made by Press Play On Tape, with code by Filmote and graphics by Vampirics, and released under the BSD 3-clause licence. It uses the Arduboy2 library (BSD) by Scott Allen. The licence texts are linked from this page.