Support
Last updated 2 August 2026
MimiGames is a standalone iMessage app. It installs no Home screen icon and cannot be opened on its own: you play it from inside a Messages conversation, and the games live in the message thread.
There is also a full web version at mimigames.alex-wf.com, and the two really do play against each other. Somebody on an iPhone and somebody in a browser can share one match, take turns, and see the same board.
If your question is not answered below, email support@alex-wf.com.
Finding MimiGames in Messages
Open any conversation in Messages, tap the apps button next to the text field, and pick MimiGames from the app drawer. If it is not there, scroll to the end of the drawer and use the edit control to turn it on.
There is deliberately no Home screen icon and no separate app to launch. Everything you touch, including the settings gear and the display-name box, is inside the Messages app.
On the web, go to mimigames.alex-wf.com in any modern browser. Nothing to install, and no app is required to accept an invite.
The games
Yacht Dice, Backgammon, Hit & Blow, Nine Men's Morris, Ludo, Hanafuda, and Last Card. All of them are free, none of them show ads, and there are no in-app purchases, so there is no billing to sort out and nothing to restore.
There are no accounts
There is nothing to sign into, no password to reset, and no email address to verify. A match is reached through the message it arrived in, or through its link on the web, and your seat is held by a per-match token stored on your own device rather than by an account.
The practical consequence: if you delete the message, or lose the browser link, there is no account for us to look you up by. Keep the message or the link if you want to come back to a match.
"This lobby expired"
A lobby is a match that has not started yet: a Last Card table waiting for everyone to tap Ready, or a match set up for more than two players that has not filled. A lobby that never starts is cancelled 24 hours after it was created, and from then on everyone who opens it is told the lobby expired.
There is nothing to rescue: the match never dealt, so no game was lost. Start a new match and send a fresh invite. The old link keeps reporting the same thing until the record is cleaned up, which is expected.
Two-player matches are not lobbies. A two-player match is live from the moment it is created, so an invite nobody has accepted yet is simply a match waiting for its first move. It does not expire after 24 hours; it is covered by the 30-day idle rule below.
How long a match is kept
Every match deletes itself. There is no archive, and deletion removes the whole record including any display names in it.
- An unstarted lobby: 24 hours from when it was created.
- A finished match: 48 hours after it ends, whether someone won, the game drew, or someone resigned. The delay exists only so both sides can look at the final board.
- An idle match: 30 days with no accepted move. Every move pushes that deadline out, so a match you are actually playing is never collected out from under you.
If an old match stops opening, it has almost certainly passed one of those deadlines. That is not a fault, and the match cannot be brought back.
Playing without a connection
Hanafuda and Last Card need the server and will not play offline. Both deal concealed hands, and the server holds every hand and the undealt deck so that no player's device is ever quietly holding somebody else's cards. The message bubble carries only a placeholder with all hands hidden, so opening one of these games without a connection shows a reconnect screen rather than a board. Starting one without a connection is refused outright, with a message saying it needs a connection, rather than dealing real hands into a message the other device could read.
The other games are public information - the whole board is already in the message - so they degrade gently instead. If the server cannot be reached, the app keeps showing the last move it received and adds a small offline hint at the bottom of the board. Resigning is unavailable while offline, because a resignation only counts once the server has recorded it.
Either way the fix is the same: get back on a network and reopen the message. The app re-checks the server every time a bubble is opened.
Who can join your match
An invite link is a key, not an invitation to one named person. Whoever opens it takes the next open seat, with no approval step and no host. Once every seat is filled the link admits nobody else.
This matters most for Last Card, which uses a growable, hostless table created at its full capacity of eight seats. Anyone who can see the invite bubble can sit down at any open seat until the table is full, so in a group chat that means any member of the chat. This is deliberate: it is what makes a table you can grow after you have sent the invite. Treat a Last Card invite as an open door, and send it only where an extra player turning up would be welcome.
A Last Card table starts once at least two seats are claimed and everyone who has joined has tapped Ready. Empty seats never hold up the start, so you do not need eight people to play.
Your display name
The display name is optional and capped at 16 characters. Set it with the settings gear in the app, or in the name box on this site before starting or joining a match. Leave it empty and the other players simply see "Player 1", "Player 2" and so on.
You can change or clear it at any time. Clearing it removes it from your device and from your next match; matches that already carry it keep it until they are deleted on the schedule above.
Asking for a match to be deleted
Every match deletes itself on the schedule above, but if you want one gone sooner, email support@alex-wf.com and say so. Include the match link, or the match id, which is the long value after match= in a web match address. Because there are no accounts, that link is the only way to identify which match you mean, so the request cannot be actioned without it.
Reporting a bug
Email support@alex-wf.com. The most useful things to include are which game it was, what you did and what you expected instead, whether you were in Messages or in a browser (and which browser), and the match link if it happened in one particular match. A screenshot of the board is worth a lot.
Privacy
What is collected, how long it is kept, and who can see it is set out in full in the privacy policy. The short version: one optional display name, no accounts, no tracking, no analytics, and no ads.
Contact
MimiGames is made by Alex W-F and served from alex-wf.com. Email support@alex-wf.com with anything at all - a bug, a question, or a request to delete a match. It is a one-person project, so please allow a few days for a reply.