A billiards roguelite from a lost 1998 disc, with a completely normal game of 8-ball hidden inside.
Made by Paul Nercessian. Now with SCRATCH: AFTERHOURS, the 2.0 update.

Sink balls. Pick relics that bend the rules of pool. Work your way down three floors of increasingly strange tables and beat The House.

Every table, texture, icon, song and sound effect in SCRATCH is generated by its own code as you play. The project contains no image, audio or model files.

New in 2.0: AFTERHOURS. The club has moods now: Table States, Contracts, High Roller bets, Rivals and Nemeses, 8 new tables, Trick Tables, 3 new bosses, 12 hidden relic synergies, Boss Rush, One Cue, Chaos and a Classic tournament. Your 1.0 save carries over. The full list is in CHANGELOG.md.

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Contents

• Play it
• Screenshots
• New in AFTERHOURS
• The roguelite
• SCRATCH Classic
• Controls
• Settings and accessibility
• Saves
• Under the hood
• Project layout
• Credits and licences

Play it

In your browser: go to bouwles.github.io/SCRATCH and click PLAY. There's nothing to install.

From a release. Download SCRATCH-web-v2.0.0.zip from the latest release and unzip it. Serve the folder with any static server, then open http://localhost:8000:

python3 -m http.server 8000

Opening index.html straight from the disk (file://) won't work, because browsers block ES modules there.

From source (Node 20.19+ or 22.12+):

git clone https://github.com/Bouwles/SCRATCH.git
cd SCRATCH
npm install
npm run dev        # http://localhost:5173

Command	What it does
npm run dev	Development server with hot reload. Add ?debug to the URL for the test hooks.
npm run build	Production build in dist/, with relative paths throughout
npm run release	Builds and checks the release, then packs release/itch/SCRATCH-web-v2.0.0.zip
npm run site	Builds the GitHub Pages site in _site/: the landing page, with the game in play/
npm run test:physics	Runs the physics edge-case suite in Node (breaks, jaws, frozen balls, obstacles, 300 random layouts)
npm run check:tricks	Plays every Trick Table with the real physics to prove each one can be solved

Every push to main rebuilds and deploys the site through GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/deploy.yml).

It needs a current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari with WebGL 2, and a mouse.

Screenshots

_{Switching to SCRATCH Classic: the tape drags, the CRT clicks off, and a quiet lounge fades in.}

New in AFTERHOURS

The first big update adds more to every part of a run.

• Table States: the club can go into one of 8 states for several tables at a time:

  • Blackout cuts the power, and the balls glow.
  • Overtime gives fewer shots, but multi-pots buy them back.
  • Jackpot fills the table with gold and puts shop prices up.
  • Static makes relics surge and short out.
  • Low Gravity means nothing wants to stop.
  • Redline stops HEAT from cooling.
  • Quiet Hours silences the crowd, and precise shots pay extra STYLE.
  • House Rules puts one more rule on every table, for bigger purses.

• Contracts: sign one of two challenges that run over several tables. The rewards include legendary relics, an extra relic slot and a shop discount.

• High Roller tables: bet 25, 50, 100 or everything you have on a harder table, and win it back doubled. The chips are the game's own; no real money is involved.

• Rivals: six regulars race you to the goal, taking a turn after every one of yours. Lose to the same one twice and they become your Nemesis.

• 8 new table types: Sequence, Territory, Bounty, Escalation, Hot Potato, Lockdown, Perfect Route and Chain.

• Trick Tables: 6 hand-built puzzles with three attempts, no clock and no heart at risk. Each one is proven solvable against the real physics.

• 3 new bosses:

  • The Collector borrows your relics.
  • The Architect builds walls across the felt.
  • The Bookie offers a side bet before every shot.

  A boss you've beaten three times may come back as a Remix.

• Relics:

  • 12 hidden synergies stay unlisted until you discover them.
  • 5 risk relics: Double Edge, Debt, Blind Faith, Final Form and Last Life.
  • Overcharge supercharges one relic until the next boss falls.
  • Once you hold four relics, your build gets a name.

• Presentation:

  • Big moments scorch and crack the felt, shake dust from the ceiling and make the lights flicker.
  • The crowd reads the table.
  • Optional text commentary reacts to your shots.
  • Shot of the Run replays your best shot at the end.

• Modes and progress:

  • Boss Rush, One Cue and Chaos.
  • Handicaps that multiply your rewards.
  • Expanded Records, a Run History of your last 10 builds, and Favourite relics.

• SCRATCH Classic:

  • AI styles that are separate from difficulty.
  • A four-player tournament.
  • A shot clock and best of 7 matches.
  • Three rooms, three new felts and two new cues.

New content opens up as you play (your first runs are the 1.0 game), and your 1.0 save carries straight over.

Some runs don't end when The House falls. ...and there are several things we aren't going to tell you about.

The roguelite

A run

Three floors: The Basement, The Deep End and The House. Each floor is nine stops long:

• tables;
• a fork in the road (event or mystery);
• a shop;
• an elite table;
• a second fork (shop or back room);
• a boss.

How tables work:

• Clearing a table pays chips and offers one of three relics.
• Failing a table costs a heart and the run moves on. Bosses must be beaten, so a lost boss is replayed.
• The 8 goes last. Sinking it early costs shots. Sinking it with the winning pot doubles that shot.

The first runs are forgiving. Your first three standard runs start with a fourth heart (until your first win), and short tips explain each new thing once.

Modes

• New Run. Winning unlocks BREAK levels 1 to 5, one at a time, and each level keeps everything below it:
  • BREAK 1: tables ask for one more ball.
  • BREAK 2: rules, bets and High Stakes tables come earlier and more often.
  • BREAK 3: shops charge 25 % more.
  • BREAK 4: every boss uses its extra mechanic.
  • BREAK 5: heat builds 50 % faster.
• Daily Scratch. The same seeded run for everyone on a given date, starting with a choice of three relics. Your best daily score is kept.
• Endless. Unlocked by winning a run. The stairs keep going down past The House, and your deepest floor is recorded.
• Modes (open up as you win): Boss Rush plays every boss back to back. One Cue has no shot limit and five lives, and every miss costs one. Chaos starts you with three random relics at HEAT III and a Table State at every turn.
• Handicaps: six optional rules, such as Double Speed or Cursed Only, that multiply score and purses for a New Run or Endless.

Content

• 19 table types:

  • Standard
  • Combo: every pot makes its pocket hungry
  • Precision
  • Blitz
  • Trick Shot
  • Bank Shot
  • Golden Ball
  • Survival
  • Chaos
  • Assassin
  • Classic 8
  • Sequence
  • Territory
  • Bounty
  • Escalation
  • Hot Potato
  • Lockdown
  • Perfect Route
  • Chain

  There are also Rival tables, Trick Tables and High Roller tables.

• 9 bosses, each with three escalating phases:

  • The Crooked Table tilts.
  • The Mimic shuffles its pockets, and one of them spits.
  • The Void is a pocket that eats shots.
  • The Dealer deals a gold pocket that counts double and red pockets that bust.
  • The Clock takes your shot for you when time runs out.
  • The Collector borrows your relics.
  • The Architect builds walls.
  • The Bookie takes side bets.
  • The House plays back against you.

• 50 relics (17 common, 15 rare, 11 cursed including 5 risk relics, 7 legendary):

  • They are tagged by build: BANK, CHAOS, CONTROL, GREED, CURSED and COMBO.
  • Picking one you already own upgrades 24 of them to NAME+.
  • You hold up to 8.
  • Bosses count only a few pots per shot, so no build can one-shot them.

• 18 table rules such as Moon Gravity, Tight Pockets, Bonus Pocket or Dangerous 8. A table gets one or two, never a pile.

• High Stakes tables (8 kinds) set one rule you must not break, for a much bigger purse. Double or Nothing offers 10 optional bets.

• 8 Table States, 8 Contracts and 6 Rivals, and 12 synergies you have to find for yourself.

• 7 anomalies, plus at least one that isn't on this list. 29 events between tables, and mystery stops that could be anything.

• Shops:

  • relics, a mystery relic, relic upgrades, cursed bargains that pay you to take them, items, hearts and cosmetics;
  • rerolls, and selling relics back.

• Mastery:

  • Shots are recognised: bank, kick, carom, combination, cuts and long pots.
  • Style (C to S+) multiplies your score.
  • Heat (0 to V) makes tables harder and rewards better while you dominate.

• Progression:

  • 55 achievements, 7 of them secret.
  • 16 ball sets, 13 cues and 6 club themes.
  • A Collection that shows undiscovered things as ???, with Synergies, Records and Run History pages.

SCRATCH Classic: a normal game of 8-ball

PLAY NORMAL 8-BALL (on the main menu or in the pause menu) switches reality. The tape drags, the CRT clicks off, one clean clack sounds in the dark, and you're in a quiet late-night lounge with a jazz trio playing. RETURN TO ROGUELITE glitches you back, and a run in progress is waiting for you.

• VS AI at Easy, Normal, Hard or Expert. The AI plans on a private copy of the same physics and plays the real table with human-like error in aim, pace and spin. It never moves balls or bends the physics. Over 16-frame matches, each level beat the one below it 12–4 or better.
• AI styles: Balanced, Cautious, Aggressive, Positional or Trickster, chosen separately from difficulty.
• Tournament: a four-player bracket against three regulars.
• Local Versus for two players on one mouse (names, best of 1, 3, 5 or 7). Practice has drills, undo and free cue-ball placement.
• Standard 8-ball rules, with an optional shot clock. Every foul says why, and ball in hand follows.
• Its own look, sound and settings:
  • always modern rendering;
  • three rooms (the Lounge, the Parlour and the Loft), eight felts, six cues, ball sets and lighting;
  • its own statistics;
  • press R on the result screen for a rematch.

Controls

Input	Action
Move the mouse	Aim (the dots show where the cue ball goes)
Hold / release the left button	Charge / shoot
Mouse wheel	Power cap
Right click while charging	Cancel the shot
Right-drag	Orbit the camera
Shift + mouse, or ← →	Fine aim
W A S D, or drag the dot on the ball	Spin
R	Reset spin
Q / E	Zoom
C or Tab	Cinematic 3D / top-down camera
Hold Space	Fast-forward while balls roll
1 2 3	Use an item
B	Take the Bookie's side bet
Esc	Pause

Menus work with the mouse or with the arrow keys, Enter and Esc.

Settings and accessibility

Tab	Options
Gameplay	Camera, aim guide Full / Reduced / Short / Off (the smaller guides pay a score bonus), camera shake 0–100 %, screen flash Full / Reduced / Off, Heat on/off, commentary on/off, reset tutorial tips
Graphics	PS1 or Modern style, quality presets Low / Medium / High, resolution scale, CRT filter, bloom, particles
UI	UI scale Auto / 80–110 %, safe area, window / fullscreen, credits
Save	Export, import, erase
Audio	Master, music, effects

• Colour is never the only cue:
  • The Dealer's pockets are labelled and move differently.
  • Forbidden balls get square rings and targets get round ones.
  • Rarities are written out.
• Presets never change the physics. It runs on a fixed 1/240 s step on every setting and at every frame rate.
• The game pauses itself when the tab loses focus. It also says so if the browser blocks saving.

Saves

Everything is saved in the browser's localStorage. Saves are versioned (the current format is v3) and older saves are migrated without losing anything. A damaged save is backed up instead of crashing the game.

A run is saved at every stop and every shot, and saves can't be used to cheat:

• Closing the tab mid-table brings back the same rack, with only the shots you had left.
• A lost table stays lost, and a won table pays out once.
• Event outcomes are fixed by the run's seed.

Export Save and Import Save move everything to another browser as one line of text.

Under the hood

• Rendering (src/render/):
  • PS1 mode renders at about 240p with vertex snapping, affine texture warp, fog, and screen-door transparency. A post pass adds bloom, 15-bit colour with ordered dither, CRT curvature, scanlines and grain.
  • Modern mode switches the same materials (one shared uniform) to per-pixel lighting, MSAA and cube-map reflections.
• Physics (src/physics/): a custom 2D solver with 3D spin:
  • sliding and rolling friction;
  • english off the cushions;
  • follow and draw;
  • pocket jaws, per-ball radius and mass;
  • a fixed 1/240 s step.
• Audio (src/audio/): every sound and every note is synthesised with WebAudio. The music is a small step sequencer: trip-hop menus, jungle tables that change character floor by floor, dark drum-and-bass bosses, and a jazz trio for Classic.
• Generation is seeded (src/game/rng.js), so Daily runs and restored saves are fully deterministic.
• The Classic AI (src/classic/ai.js) plans with a private copy of the physics, spread across frames (at most 7 ms each), then plays the shot with execution noise tuned per level.
• The UI is DOM on a virtual 640×360 grid. Icons are drawn procedurally on a 16×16 grid (src/ui/art.js).
• Testing:
  • Headless playtests drove bots through full runs, every mode and every boss to tune the balance.
  • npm run test:physics checks the solver's invariants across hundreds of edge cases, and npm run check:tricks proves every puzzle table is solvable.
  • Old saves were migrated and resumed mid-table.
  • It holds 60 fps with every effect stacked, in both PS1 and Modern modes.
  • Layout was checked from 960×540 to 1920×1080.

Project layout

index.html              boot screen and loader
src/
  main.js               entry: fonts, WebGL check, boot
  game/                 Game loop, shots, runs, relics, encounters, events, meta progression
  classic/              SCRATCH Classic: rules, AI, lounge, UI, the reality switch
  physics/              the solver
  render/               PS1 / Modern renderer, materials, procedural textures
  world/                table, balls, cue, room, effects
  audio/                synthesis and the music sequencer
  ui/                   menus, HUD, icons
public/licenses/        third-party licence texts (shipped in the build)
scripts/release.mjs     npm run release
scripts/site.mjs        npm run site (GitHub Pages)
scripts/physics-tests.mjs   npm run test:physics
scripts/check-tricks.mjs    npm run check:tricks
site/index.html         the landing page
.github/workflows/      deploys the site to GitHub Pages
release/itch/           itch.io page copy, upload steps, cover, banners, GIFs
docs/screenshots/       screenshots for the README and the site
docs/media/             video loops for the site

Credits and licences

SCRATCH was designed and made by Paul Nercessian.

It is built with three.js (MIT) and Vite (MIT). Its typefaces are Press Start 2P, Dela Gothic One, DotGothic16, Chakra Petch, Inter and Cormorant Garamond, all under the SIL Open Font License. Full details are in ATTRIBUTIONS.md, and the licence texts ship with the build in licenses/.

© 2026 Paul Nercessian. All rights reserved. The third-party components above keep their own licences.