The Chat Quest

The Problem I Kept Facing

Finding new board games always followed the same frustrating pattern. I’d reach out to my gaming friends with the same questions: “How many players?”, “Light or heavy?”, “What theme?” After a while, I felt like I was annoying them. There had to be a better way.

The First Attempt (2019)

In 2019, conversational AI was having its moment with tools like Google Dialogflow. The idea clicked: what if finding a board game was as simple as talking to a knowledgeable friend? I partnered with Alba Durana, a talented designer, and we built the first version—a beautiful interface running on CloudRun with Next.js and NestJS, powered by Dialogflow’s conversational AI.

It worked. It was exciting. Then life happened—marriage, two kids, and countless other priorities pushed the project aside.

The Rebuild (2025-2026)

The idea never left me. By 2025, the AI landscape had transformed completely. LLMs could understand nuanced requests, vector databases enabled semantic search, and Cloudflare’s edge platform made global deployment trivial. I rebuilt the entire project from scratch, keeping Alba’s original visual identity but modernizing everything underneath with SvelteKit, Workers AI, and Gemini.

The Chat Quest officially launched in January 2026.

How It Works

Instead of complex filters, you just describe what you’re looking for: “something like Catan but more strategic” or “a cooperative game for family night.” The AI understands the intent, searches semantically across 60,000+ games from BoardGameGeek, and suggests matches. It’s the conversation I wish I could have every time I wanted to discover a new game.

The technical stack runs entirely on Cloudflare’s edge network—Workers for compute, D1 for data, Vectorize for semantic search, and Workers AI for natural language understanding. Everything happens at the edge with sub-50ms latency globally.

What I Learned

Ideas have staying power. Seven years passed between versions, but the core concept remained valuable. If something keeps nagging at you, there’s probably something there.

Technology timing matters. The 2019 version was ahead of its time. The 2026 version benefits from better AI models, vector databases, edge computing, and generous free tiers that make it sustainable.

Preserve what works. Alba’s visual identity was perfect. Rather than redesigning everything, I kept what worked and rebuilt the technology underneath.

Scope creep is real. The temptation to add social features, collections, and recommendation algorithms is constant. Staying focused on the core value—conversational discovery—has been crucial.

The Future

The Chat Quest will never replace your circle of expert friends or your favorite local game store. But it can help you make that first filter from 60,000+ games, discover options you hadn’t considered, and arrive at conversations with clear alternatives in mind.

I’m exploring personalization (learning from user preferences), social features (sharing discoveries), and local game store integration. But for now, the focus is simple: help people discover their next favorite board game through natural conversation.

Visit The Chat Quest to start discovering games.

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