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For a flat, rules-heavy card game that also needs a conventional mobile-app interface, a TypeScript rules core inside a React Native app can be a practical choice. It gives the developer control over rules, tests, and the surrounding app—but also means owning work a game engine would otherwise help organize, including card hit testing, gestures, animation performance, accessibility, and native integrations.

Unity and Godot both provide documented 2D development workflows. Neither is automatically the right choice: the decision depends on the game’s rendering and physics needs, the app experience, the team’s skills, and how much engine-level work it wants to maintain.

Why use TypeScript for a card game?

In a case study published October 5, 2026, developer glebr2d2 describes building Decks, an iOS app with fourteen games at the time: nine solitaire games and five puzzles. The app used a pure TypeScript game core, design tokens, and a mobile app built with Expo, React Native, React Native Skia, and Reanimated. Skia drew the card table; React Native views handled menus, settings, sheets, and rules pages. The developer’s account of the project is a specific implementation story, not a controlled comparison of engines.

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One rules engine for multiple games

The developer’s central design goal was to support many games on one platform. Rather than implementing each game separately, the project represented rules as data interpreted by a shared engine. In the author’s account, that architecture let the rules core enumerate legal moves, power hints and “no moves left” checks, and support tests and bots without depending on rendering.

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The core reportedly avoided runtime dependencies and platform APIs, with time and random input passed in. That separation made it possible to run rules tests in Node and on the phone, and to reproduce bugs using a random seed and a sequence of moves. These benefits came from the project’s architecture; TypeScript alone does not guarantee them.

A single language across app and rules

The author used TypeScript for the mobile app, rules core, tests, and build-time tools. React Native provides official guidance for setting up TypeScript projects and links to the TypeScript Handbook in its TypeScript documentation.

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The author also wanted app-style menus, settings, accessibility text sizing, and purchases around a custom-rendered card table. In this project, menus and settings used native-style React Native views, while the table used Skia. The author reports implementing StoreKit 2 purchases through a small Swift Expo module.

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What a custom stack makes you responsible for

Choosing not to use a full game engine does not remove engine-like problems; it transfers more of them to the app team. The developer says they implemented hit testing and gesture handling, managed per-frame work, dealt with native dependency version friction, and maintained a custom rules language. That language also had limitations: repeated expressions and no way to name subexpressions.

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Input and animation need deliberate limits

The case study gives examples of how small implementation choices can become performance or reliability problems. The author reports that conditional transforms across 52 cards caused a touch-related crash. In a Codebreak session, the reported frame rate fell from 118 to 41 before the author traced the issue to idle work and repeated font creation. The first drag implementation reportedly triggered about 3,120 checks per second for 52 cards. These are the developer’s observations about this app—not comparative benchmarks or forecasts for another project.

The practical lesson is to establish boundaries around what gesture and animation code can do, and to profile the actual app on its target devices. A custom canvas may give precise control over a table, but the team must decide how to keep hit testing, rendering, and frame work predictable.

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Canvas accessibility is a separate design problem

The developer describes the Skia canvas as inaccessible to VoiceOver as a semantic table. Surrounding React Native views can provide accessible controls and text, but a custom-rendered board still needs an explicit accessibility strategy. If screen-reader users must inspect cards, understand positions, and make moves, plan how those actions and game state will be exposed; drawing cards on a canvas does not provide that structure by itself.

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How TypeScript, Godot, and Unity differ for this decision

Decision area TypeScript core and app framework Godot Unity
Rules and testing The Decks author chose a pure TypeScript rules core that could be tested separately from the screen. This is a project-specific architecture. The cited comparison reflects one developer’s prototype experience. Godot’s official tutorial walks through a complete 2D game workflow. Unity’s official documentation covers 2D project features and workflows, including sprites and Tilemaps.
Rendering and physics The author judged flat cards and simple transforms sufficient for this project, and used Skia to draw the table. The official tutorial demonstrates a 2D game; it does not compare performance with this app. Unity documents 2D-specific features and 2D physics. The documentation does not establish that Unity is faster or slower for this particular app.
App interface and accessibility The author combined React Native views with a Skia canvas and reported that the canvas was not exposed as a VoiceOver table. The cited tutorial alone does not establish how to build a full app interface or meet its accessibility needs. The cited 2D overview alone does not establish how to build a full app interface or meet its accessibility needs.
Work the team owns The Decks developer owned hit testing, gestures, frame-work constraints, native modules, and build compatibility. Godot offers an engine and editor workflow; assess whether its tools fit the project and team. Unity offers an engine and 2D tooling workflow; assess whether its tools fit the project and team.

The official references describe available workflows, not a universal winner: Godot’s first 2D game tutorial and Unity’s 2D development documentation.

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Which approach should you choose?

Choose a custom TypeScript core when rules and app integration lead

  • Your game is primarily a flat board or card table, without a strong need for 3D scenes or complex physics.
  • You want rules logic that can be tested independently of the screen, including repeatable scenarios driven by seeds and moves.
  • You expect to reuse rules infrastructure across several games and are prepared to design and maintain that shared system.
  • Your product needs substantial mobile-app UI or platform integration alongside the game surface, and your team is comfortable with React Native and TypeScript.

Choose an established engine when its workflow solves more of the problem

  • Your game depends on engine-oriented scene, rendering, animation, or physics workflows.
  • Your team values an integrated editor and is prepared to develop within the engine’s structure.
  • You would rather use established 2D tooling than build and maintain custom input and rendering infrastructure.

These are decision criteria, not claims that a particular engine is easier, lighter, or faster in every project. Prototype the hardest part of the game in the candidate stack and check the interface, accessibility, build, and performance requirements that matter to your release.

How much weight should you give the Decks project figures?

The developer reports about 1,650 game-core tests and about 5,000 app tests during the 1.0.3 cycle, along with an app size of about 59 MB. The author also reports 855 accessibility scenes across five languages at the largest text size, with zero violations. These are self-reported details from one project, not independently verified measurements or benchmarks.

The same account says Yukon became the app’s fourteenth game without changes to the engine or rules language, bringing along shared undo, hints, saves, and rules text. That illustrates the intended payoff of the data-driven architecture, but does not establish how much work another team would save or how the approach compares with either engine.

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The author’s advice—“choose your stack for the task, not for the hype”—fits the evidence. The project shows one way to build a rules-heavy card app with TypeScript and React Native, and the costs that approach involved. It does not prove that a flat card game must avoid a 3D engine or that a custom stack is the best choice for every developer.

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