Exchange Alley

Four market card games, one table, zero internet. Four market card games played face to face over Bluetooth — no servers, no accounts, no signal. Joining is free forever.

Four market-themed card games. One table. No internet.

Exchange Alley is a compendium of card games you play face to face with the people around you, phone to phone over Bluetooth. No servers, no accounts, no signal. Switch Bluetooth on and deal.

BULL RUN — Play your cards. Time the market. Survive the run.

The flagship. Four market rows, and every card you play is a trade. Land the sixth card in a row and the market crashes on you — you take the lot as penalties. Deploy your whole hand and hold the fewest bullheads when the closing bell rings.

Three markets to trade: the classic Original, the two-sided Professional, and open-outcry Open — plus a Thin Market toggle that turns counting cards into the edge. 2–6 players.

BOOK BUILDER — Build your book. Corner the sectors.

A sealed-bid auction. Everyone, the seller included, privately names a price for the stock on the block, and the highest bid takes it. Everyone can see what you own; nobody can see what you can still afford, and that gap is the whole game.

Float a stock to talk up its sector — when the round settles, only the top three sectors by volume pay out. Back one that goes quiet and you're left holding air. 3–6 players.

THE RALLY — Climb together. Hold your nerve.

Co-operative, and completely silent. Everyone plays onto one shared pile in ascending order: no talking, no turns, no signals. You simply have to sense when your lowest card is the lowest still in play.

Misjudge it and the desk loses margin. Run dry and you're liquidated. 2–4 players.

CIRCUIT BREAKER — The market's in freefall. Trip the halt.

Co-operative crash survival. The desk clears the phase together or not at all. A regulatory wall sits between you — no table talk, one sanctioned disclosure per phase — and you steer each client's book through the crash one coordinated cross at a time. Safe-haven assets override everything; knowing when to burn one is most of the game. 3–5 players.

ONE PORTFOLIO, ONE RANK

Every ranked game feeds a single Portfolio Value. Climb from Bronze to Diamond, and rank against the friends you've actually played — anyone you meet over Bluetooth is added to your books automatically.

PRACTICE ANY TIME

Bull Run, Book Builder and Circuit Breaker each deal a solo table against the Robos: offline, unranked, free. The Rally is people-only — silence needs a room.

FREE TO PLAY, FREE TO JOIN

Exchange Alley is free to download, and joining someone else's table is free forever, for every game. Hosting your own is free for your first five games; after that, one unlock covers hosting every game in the suite. Bought once, never a subscription.

NAMED FOR A REAL PLACE

In 1698 London's stockjobbers were thrown out of the Royal Exchange for rowdiness. They set up down the road in Exchange Alley, a passage off Cornhill, and did business across the tables of two coffee houses. For the next seventy-five years the London stock market had no building and no wires — just people in a room, reading each other.

That's the idea here.

Multiplayer needs two or more devices with Bluetooth switched on. No internet connection required.