I’ve been working on Gaming Couch, a web-based game platform where up to 8 players use their smartphones as controllers to play real-time action mini-games on a central browser screen.
TL;DR:
- 18 competitive mini-games for up to 8 players
- Runs entirely in the browser
- Phones act as controllers (no apps, no accounts required)
- Focused on fast, chaotic, real-time party games (no trivia)
- Currently in public early access
Try it here: https://gamingcouch.com. Open the link on a computer, host a session, scan the QR code with your phone(s) and play!
What is it?
Gaming Couch is a party game platform where friends play short competitive action games together on one screen, using their phones as controllers (there's also support for physical gamepads if that's more your thing!)
I intentionally avoided trivia and text-heavy games. Many people don’t write or read English fluently, and I wanted games where reaction, timing, and chaos matter more than spelling.
It’s currently in early public access with 18 mini-games, all made by me and a two friends. All game rounds last ~1 minute, scores carry over, and after each round players vote on the next game. If you’re solo, 3 games support bots, but it’s best with a full couch of people as half the fun comes from the social aspect of playing together!
Why I built it:
For the last 15+ plus years, me and my friends have loved video game nights but organizing them has always been a PITA when you have more than 4 people playing:
- Different games were under different Steam accounts requiring downloads and installation.
- Extra controllers were missing (somebody forgot to bring theirs) or they wouldn’t pair.
- Consoles were expensive and not always available if we were on the road.
Once I started building it, other dev friends asked if they could make games for it too, which led me to realize this could also be a platform for small party games, especially for gamejam devs who don’t want to or have time to build multiplayer infrastructure from scratch. This is why supporting third-party games is the next major feature I’m working on.
Tech stack:
- Games run locally in the host’s browser (no streaming of games)
- Phones connect via WebRTC to the host session (1–10ms latency in ideal conditions with P2P connection)
- Fallback to TURN when direct P2P connection isn’t possible e.g. due to strict firewall settings in corporate networks or use of VPN's
- Website/Platform made with React + TypeScript
- Existing games made with Unity or just plain JS/TS.
- Backend: Supabase (Postgres + auth only, currently only used for optional user accounts)
How is it different from e.g. Jackbox, Airconsole or Nintendo?
Jackbox is absolutely great, but it’s heavily dependent on English literacy and "being funny" on the spot. I wanted something focused on fast, chaotic, real-time action games that work even if your friends speak different languages or just want to smash buttons. Also, I'm not a fan of their party pack model...
AirConsole is the most well known comparison to Gaming Couch in terms of technology and execution, but I feel there is a gap for a curated experience where the UI is unified, rounds are 60 seconds, and the competitive "meta-game" (scoreboards/voting) is baked into the platform. And in any case AirConsole was acquired by a car-software company and have pivoted their focus from couch gaming toward in-car entertainment.
Nintendo games are usually the gold standard in the party game category but the HW and games cost so much! With Gaming Couch, I want to keep the accessibility threshold as low as possible so everyone is able to play without upfront HW or SW costs.
What do you think of this? Are you an interested player or perhaps a developer who has had an idea to develop a fun 8 player mini-game but has been daunted by the idea thus far?
We tried most of the game options and had really great fun with all of it. Everything worked fine, no issues, no desync, and it didn't destroy battery life on the phone controllers either. I'd say the ferry race and the parking games were my favourite overall, but the others aren't bad by any means! So, thanks a lot for your work, and I'll definitely be returning to Gaming Couch with my group!
And for a question: Do you have plans to monetize the platform in the future? If so, can you share any details on how that would work?
With regards to monetization, I opened it up a bit down the chain but the main point was that nothing is yet set in stone. I'd like to keep it as easily accessible as possible so everyone can play regardless of if they have the means to pay or not. Naturally this would drive me towards ads, but I don't want to turn the platform to "Hulu" with their annoying ads. If the service would have ads, in my opinion it should also have a way to turn them off, this could be done via subscription or similar method for those wanting to support the project and possible get few extra-perks.
With regards to 3rd party developers who develop games for the platform, I think it would be fair to implement some kind of revenue share model, which could be based on e.g. minutes played so the most liked and played games also get rewarded.
But as nothing is yet implemented, this is still very much in the air and I'm very open to any suggestions!
A gaming platform like this hits all the pain points, I'll try it soon and see if the games are good, thanks!
I’ve spent several hours over the holidays searching for something my family can play and coming up empty.
The game that most often works is Song Pop Party on Apple TV, but non-apple phones have a second rate experience and keep disconnecting.
Ideally we’d have a trivia game as I also want to engage some older folks, but the leasing trivia game on Apple TV is way too US specific and hard for our family to enjoy.
There used to be a game show on local TV in the late nineties called “Noot vir Noot” (note by note) that had a whole bunch of games based on music that was familiar to the local market. I’ve been chasing something like that for years and not come close.
I guess the point of my rambling is that I LOVE the phones-as-controllers approach to party games, but many seem to focus on Nintendo-esque experiences, rather than quiz game like experiences.
I am aware of the Jackbox games but haven’t looked at the recent releases. They were hit and miss with the family in the past, with many of the non-english first language folks often not getting it.
If you like more quiz like games, I can recommend Kahoot & Gametje for you, which work with a similar phones-as-controllers approach :)
It’s not so much the language as the content. Songs and pop culture that 30-60 year old South Africans would be familiar with.
Totally agree with your thoughts on jackbox, they're fun but not gaming. Def saving this for later.
Party games need to pick and play, I’m long time gamer, if I want to play MP with other gamers I got million games, but I want to play with random people who never gamed aging from 9-60. Now that’s a challenge, not sure of the games you have this demographic.
Having said that, did you develop all of the games yourself? I’ve done some game dev but haven’t touched it for a while, I’m curious if AI actually speeds up the development of this kind of small games? Any experience on that? I love some aspects of game dev but it gets super tedious if you want a certain experience, would’ve been great to get AI to do that :) (i did Godot). I heard good things about unity+AI
All of the games have been developed by me and two of my friends. We do use Cursor and models like Gemini & Claude for generic debugging as part of everyday development tools but nothing games-specific AI tools or deeply integrated workflows have been used. For refactoring large parts of a codebase, I do enjoy using Cursor specifically and I think it does speed up development efforts by quite a lot. However it's not what non-programmers usually think, that you can just write one prompt and generate a game :D
It would be nice to be able to mix game pads and smart phones -- when gaming with kids, none of my kids have smart phones yet, so it would be nice to be able to let them use Switch controllers if we have those on hand, or use phones if we don't.
Regardless, I'm interested in this, and would be interested in contributing a game or two. This seems excellent!
Would you be interested in also beta-testing our upcoming 3rd party game development SDK? If so, please ping me on our Discord (link at the end of the gamingcouch.com web page) so I can take your contact details for the beta-testing list :)
If Im having people over I would never start a PC and ask them to hunker down, turning on the tv though…
(Also free to play with a Guest account)
The hardest so far was Japanese. The easiest, strangely enough, was Mandarin—which was like 97% accurate out of the box using Claude.
Edit: I have an Nvidia shield for gaming on TV.
Edit: I think I can't move pointer on TV using controller any more because it's input is being captured by that screen at that point. May be assign a random name and give option to change the name.
Edit: Used Shields app to move pointer like actual mouse and was able to enter name and play the games.
Feedback: it might help to show who is controlling the screen at the moment when browsing games. I was connected with phone and my kid was on controller and initially I was mashing keys on controller to actually start the games (pressing A to start). Realized later than since I am the leader may be I should press A on the phone screen.
Slightly different approach, each plays in their browser/phone and there is no “main display”. And my games are cooperative. DM if interested.
I’m releasing a new game BossBattle soon so keep your eyes peeled.
Instead I want to focus on very short action-based party mini-games. All of the mini-games are tied together via a scoreboard & party voting system. While each of the mini-games might look different, the goal is always the same (be the last player standing to gather most points). In the end, after 5, 10, 15 or 20 mini-games you'll get to see who will be crowned the king of the Gaming Couch. The emphasis is on the social aspect of gaming as opposed to individual game lore or intricate game mechanics
If you prefer more quiz/slower paced games akin to Jackbox. You can check out my project which was also on HackerNews recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45887709
Would love to port some of those game ideas to this platform when you open up the developer platform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Games may be a great thematic inspiration for a game made for this platform
I loved how we could pick a sponsor at the start after configuring our names and whatnot. Everyone could swear their favorite sponsor made them play better.
Reflecting on my time playing Wii the sports games were ok but nothing screams 'gotta have this' to me.
If I could give one unsolicited piece of inspiration it'd be to watch this episode of Community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOueERJzjrU
There is definitely an awesome couch multiplayer game in there somewhere
Thanks for the link, need to start ideating new games ;)
Ha just scrolled past this
For people who'd like to support the project, get rid of the few ads and possibly also some other extra-features such as in-game avatar wearables or similar, there could be a subscription option as well.
Interested to hear what the options you were thinking of were? Nothing is yet implemented on that regard so this is a good time to influence the outcome :D
Personally, I think as long as the price is right, and you include some screenshots/trailers, most people wouldn't mind this model - particularly if you're able to choose your games, which I think would be a huge plus
--
Another monetization model idea: a simple subscription model
Free users get X plays a month (5-10) - this means anyone can play it, probably for 1 or 2 nights, before they have to upgrade.
Subscribed users get unlimited plays - with some small perks like avatar customization or something. You could also experiment with other things like including new games in the subscription for the first few months they're released
Emphasis mine. Sounds like they're not ruling it out.
Anyway I think this would be an amazing thing to let other people contribute to as this is an entire industry of hypercasual games which could easily be ported to this minus the annoying ads
The way I've been thinking it could work is that developers can upload their own games to the platform and by default the games would only be visible under their own accounts and in order to play the uploaded game the developer account would have to be in the session.
Then if the developer would like to publish their game for others to play as well they could just check a box. After that the game would go to a "New drops" playlist where players everywhere can test out different new games and rate them at the end. The games gathering most votes would then be upgraded to the main playlists. In a nutshell the system would work somewhat similar to HN frontpage and new submission pools
AirConsole link for context: https://www.airconsole.com/