Baigaeshi Labs

倍返し · bai-gae-shi · paid back twice over

An incubator for projects that would not survive a business plan. Built carefully anyway, and left running to see what happens.

The lab

Baigaeshi Labs takes in projects that would not survive a meeting: a space-trading game for people who remember 1986 and have since acquired a mortgage; a scouting desk that has read every season of the NHL since 1917; whatever turns up next. Each one was built in the gaps of the serious work — Verstavo, a credit-surveillance platform for commercial real estate, whose long builds are where the gaps come from — by one person and the machines, and put on the internet before anybody could talk him out of it.

They have one rule between them: measured, not remembered. Nothing is claimed that was not counted, and where the record stops, the page says so instead of guessing. Some of them will grow up. The rest will be left running. We want to try out as many ideas as we can before the bubble pops.

Projects of Dubious Benefits

Quadrant Prospectus

OPEN · IN DEVELOPMENT · FREE WHILE IT IS BEING BUILT

Contract prospecting for Consolidated Dynamics, at the far end of a long jump. One ship, a crew of six, a galaxy that is older than the contract, and an archive every crew writes into. A first run is thirty to fifty hours. Nothing in it is timed.

Play Quadrant Prospectus →

Armchair Hockey Scout

2026–27 EDITION · 750 REPORTS · 108 SEASONS MEASURED

A long-form report on every player in the league — the finesse game, the physical game, the intangibles — over the analytics that used to live inside a front office. All 32 clubs get the same read. Every season is its own edition and nothing is overwritten, so what was said about a player three years ago is still there to be judged.

Read the reports →

Next: an illustrated parser adventure in the manner of 1986. It has a screenplay and no title yet. More when there is more.

The name

Baigaeshi is a promise to return a thing twice over. It is what a certain television banker says to the people who have wronged him, and it is what we owe the games and the hockey annuals we grew up on, which gave us more than they were paid for. We are working on the balance.

Company profile

Name
Baigaeshi Labs
Established
2026 — forty years after Starflight, and the year it became reasonable to build a game in the gaps of a working day.
Business
Incubation of projects that would not survive a business plan. At present: a turn-based game for the browser and a hockey scouting desk. Design, development and operation of each.
Platform
Any browser. Nothing to download.
Staff
One, and the machines.
Motto
To AI is human. After a subtitle of 1986, one letter changed.
Day job
Verstavo — credit surveillance for commercial real estate. The serious one.