Show HN: Gaming Couch – a local multiplayer party game platform for 8 players
gamingcouch.comHi HN,
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?
Hey! I played your game with my friends last weekend! We get together every month to play board games, and lately we've been doing a lot of party games like Jackbox or King of the Castle. One of our guys had heard about your game and we gave it a go and we ended up playing it for most of the day!
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?
Nice to hear you had fun! The parking games are some of the most divisive games we have, either people love them or hate them with a passion. Some have even sent me messages that they'd like to pay just to skip the parking games altogether, haha :D
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!
I love this initiative!
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.
Thanks! I actually loved the song quiz that was available via the first version of Amazon Echo that worked using voice commands. No idea if that's available any more though.
If you like more quiz like games, I can recommend Kahoot & Gametje for you, which work with a similar phones-as-controllers approach :)
What languages would you like to be playing in? I guess Noot vir Noot is Afrikaans?
This has been sorely missing. I've been playing Jackbox games with friends, and that's been the closest we've gotten to the ideal, but their games are slower-paced and thus rely more on mechanics that don't translate well across cultures.
A gaming platform like this hits all the pain points, I'll try it soon and see if the games are good, thanks!
Yup, I've thought exactly same before starting the development of Gaming Couch. Jackbox was the go-to easiest (in terms of accessibility and funniness) for my friend groups but had it's shortfalls which I'd thought I could fix so here we are! Let me know what you think of the games once you get to try them :)
There's a saying that no idea is unique, that when you think of an idea, someone else would have thought of the same. I _literally_ have the same idea and am working on a PoC, except mine is completely LAN-based. I'm so happy to see your app!
Haha, so true! But even if the general idea is the same, there's always a million smaller choices to make it more unique :) I can def. see that a completely LAN-based approach would have its own audience that want to play fully offline games
I’ve been looking for something like this and will try this. Looks great. I tried Amazon prime game stuff (forgot what it’s called) is not too bad but the selection of games are still not non-gamer friendly enough.
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
Thanks! I agree that party games really need to easy enough to just pick up and play. It's no fun spending 1-2 hours first just learning about the game mechanics. I've gotten quite nice feedback from people that don't usually play games that they've really enjoyed Gaming Couch. My overall aim is to make it simple enough that my grandma can start a game session and play without previous experience in gaming. This means a good skill/luck -ratio for each mini-game, kind of like in Mario Kart it's possible to win by chance even if you don't drive the best using items like blue shells and bullet bils. It evens out the playing field.
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
Great job! I had the same idea when i first played jackbox games 10+ years ago. Yet i never gave it serious thought or effort again.
Thanks! I initially had the idea also 10+ years ago but only got around to do it now.. I think with the web standards having been improved and individual phone performance being much better, it's actually good that I didn't start on the idea right then and there
This is sick. I've always wanted to see a modern take on pokemon stadium minigames.
Totally agree with your thoughts on jackbox, they're fun but not gaming. Def saving this for later.
Somehow I've totally missed pokemon stadium minigames even though I did play a lot of pokemon back in the day. Or maybe my memory is just not what it used to be. Either way, thanks for mentioning them and hope you have a great gaming session later on!
Does this work with actual controller? I want to play with my family but my kid is too young to have a phone. He does have a controller though. We have 2 more controllers. Will be best if we can all play with controllers instead of touch screens.
Edit: I have an Nvidia shield for gaming on TV.
Yes it does work with actual controllers as well! I've tested it with Xbox and Joy-Con controllers but any controller that you can connect to the central screen should work. Let me know if you have any problems connecting and I'll see what I can do.
Thanks. Very excited to play. I am trying it right now. Opened site on TV and pressed play now. From controller I pressed start. Then it asks to enter name. I am unable to go to that box for some reason. Can't move the pointer on TV any more to select that box. It should automatically be selected for input so that it shows up the keyboard. Will update this message or post a reply if I figure it or fail.
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.
Are you opening the website via your smart tv's browser? If so, it could mean that the TV is not able to handle the live connections. I've noticed some Samsung Tv's exhibiting this behauviour. At the moment the recommended way is to run the games on a computer. Still a lot of optimization for me to do when it comes to smart tv's
Would it be possible to enable controllers on the client? That would be the best way to use a steamdeck. Could host on or stream to the steamdeck for one player but my friend also has a handheld
I think it could be possible to make it work like that but I'm not familiar with Steamdeck itself so I can't say for sure. Need to look into it. Just so I understood you correctly, you want to host the session on the steamdeck and control your own character via the deck, while at the same time your friend uses their own smartphone to control their character while looking at your steamdeck?
I would host the game on a regular pc and use multiple steamdecks as clients.
Ah ok, now I understand. I don't have a steam deck at hand but based on a quick google search I think it should be possible. The key is whether you are able to connect the steamdecks to the PC so that the Javascript Gamepad API recognizes the decks as controllers. You can connect the decks to the PC and if they show up on this site: https://hardwaretester.com/gamepad they should work with Gaming Couch!
Fantastic idea!! I've been working off and on with local 4-8 player games, but I had only been using the Javascript gamepad API. I like how you're using smart phones, this seems like a good way to go about it!
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!
You are able to mix gamepads and smart phones! Though there is a limit that you can only connect a maximum of 4 gamepads to a single session due to limitations with the JS gamepad API.
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 :)
Beautiful. Congrats on the beta launch
Thanks! :)
Instead of a central screen, what about just having the first client get a URL or code they can share in a group chat. I think this will help remove a lot of friction in getting this setup by piggybacking on top of existing platform's groups.
That's a good idea and something I've already toyed around a bit. Currently I'm having problems with iOS devices randomly crashing out due to some obscure memory limitation. I need to find a way to work around that and then could deploy that for others to test as well. I agree that it would remove quite a lot of friction and make the games even more accessible to players
I saw this from another post and was going to try it out but lost the link. Thanks for posting here again! Will try it out next time when I have a group of people around
Do you think it would work on smart tvs with browsers?
If Im having people over I would never start a PC and ask them to hunker down, turning on the tv though…
You can give https://gametje.com a try. I created an Android TV app for it (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gametje). Also works in browsers/remote calls etc. It is slower paced play from smart phones more akin to Jackbox Games (not action games).
(Also free to play with a Guest account)
I've tested it to work on newer LG TV's but at the moment since the games have not yet been super optimized, it will most likely be somewhat laggy if the TV doesn't have enough computing power. Something to work on for the future since I agree that it would be great to just have the app on a smart tv for super easy accessibility
Check out Moonlight/Sunshine. I have several tvs around the house and my primary desktop is in the utility room with no monitor or keyboard. Essentially any TV can be any PC, without cables.
plug your computer in via hdmi? Or am I too old?
You might be in that sweet spot where people use laptops as their personal computing device rather than an office PC or smartphone. I personally only have a desktop PC in a different room so there's no way I'd be able to plug it in using HDMI. The alternative would be using something like parsec or moonlight to stream my PC screen over the LAN.
I often use my phone with a USBC to HDMI adapter.
Great looking release, well done! I used to play airconsole with my partner a fair bit about 6-7 years ago. How does this differ or is it similar but more modern/performant?
Thank you for the kind words! AirConsole's original idea was to replace your dedicated gaming consoles with the web, hence the name "AirConsole". I don't want to do that, because I don't think the web is ready for that, at least yet.
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
Please don't use LLM-translation for the site. I can only speak for the Russian version, but it is very crude. Maybe it's just me but I'd much rather skip something that so poorly attempts to cater to me, instead of sticking to English or doing the translation properly.
I’ve worked on large-scale LLM translations for a largish niche-topic publisher and I can attest this is a nuanced process. You have to create a manual feedback loop with a native speaker and use that to improve the prompt until it gets to a certain point.
The hardest so far was Japanese. The easiest, strangely enough, was Mandarin—which was like 97% accurate out of the box using Claude.
Fair enough, thanks for the feedback. it was my attempt to test whether it would make it even more easier to start up the games and then also think of translating the small in-game tips as well
Curious if you've given any thought to whether or not you want to create clones of the usual Wii sports games or not or leave those squarely in Nintendo's court and find fun elsewhere?
If you mean like utilizing gyroscope and other sensor of the phone to control the game characters (like in Wii tennis, bowling and so on), I've thought about it but I don't think it's intuitive enough to use your phone like that and I think it would make the learning curve a bit too steep. Nintendo is great at what they do and it has taken a lot from them to make Wii-games work, I don't think it would be too useful to try to copy them :)
Actually no when I asked I hadn't even made that obvious connection. I think main reason to avoid that is Wii motes had wrist slings, no doubt if you implemented phone gyroscopes it'd end with a social media post of someones damaged phone and tv.
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
Haha that's also very true. The games were ok and fun but really I think what made Nintendo games special was the 'magic' of it all. In a similar sense as their Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is not the best game but damn do I appreciate the engineering and 'magic' that the game offers, it's just so cool.
Thanks for the link, need to start ideating new games ;)
Gauntlet is definitely a genre ripe for this too. Good luck!
Appreciate it, thanks!
Thank you all for the messages, will be going through them in the coming hours! Was a bit surprised to see this bounce on the front page, but I guess it came from the second chance pool :)
I know these guys. Definitely give their games a try! They are actively developing and making it better every week. It's especially fun in person. My favorite game is the dodgeball game.
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
Thank John! Def. give Gametje a try as well, great games and even greater guy behind it :)
That's so cool!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Games may be a great thematic inspiration for a game made for this platform
Thanks for the link, hadn't heard of California Games before but it looks really nice and retro, which I can appreciate
Would love full remote play somehow so I can use it for team games with my remote team!
This is something I've been thinking of as well. There's actually a demo implementation with few games that support fully remote gaming but the problem I've been running into is some memory limitations on iOS devices causing crashes. On Android everything seems to work a-ok. I think the iOS problem can be solved, just will take some time
There are remote team video games like (mine) https://epicwin.team .
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.
This is interesting, thanks for sharing! Need to try it out
I'm curious, I'm working on a multiplayer game and I'm wondering if this would be a cool new alternative platform for it to target, would you be open to a chat?
Email in profile :)
I just sent an email to you!
This is amazing!! Are you planning on making it open source?
No plans yet but the 3rd party game development SDK will be made publicly available so that anyone can start making their own games for the platform!
Impressive work. I shipped couch multiplayer games on PS4 in the past and it has passed its heyday (it didn't do too well, financially).
So seeing it done on the web actually makes a lot of sense.
Thanks! What game was it if you don't mind me asking?
This looks great, will def try the next time I'm with friends.
Very cool, would cool if it's open ecosystem to develop games for, it's on my 2026 bucket list
This is in the plans! Currently working on 3rd party game development SDK and the pipeline to support uploading your own games to the platform
This looks super fun, will try with the family when they get out of bed :-)
Thanks! Should be fun family time, unless there's a lot of competitive sprits running in the family, then it just might cause chaos :D
Just had a session - it’s really great - family loved it. Incredibly slick, great gameplay, no latency. Ace!
Nice, great to hear! I'm actually surprised how smooth everything has been going thus far :D
Amazing product. Thinking of more possibilities like this.
I wish I saw this two hours ago! I just got back from family Christmas with Jackbox games and I would’ve loved to as try this out too. Definitely going to try this soon.
Would be nice to get match with a random party!
There's no public support for online multiplayer yet, which would make it possible to play with a random party but that is something I've been thinking would be a good feature to add :)
definitely going to try it with some friends. But it's true that at first I was checking which games I could connect to, or how it worked without reading anything, and thought it was to connect to some multiplayer games of steam, and gaming couch acted as a layer to use phones as joystick only.
Ah right, I see what you mean. For that specific purpose I remember seeing some other software like Virtual Gamepad and Remote Gamepad that should let you use your phone as controller for Steam games. Haven't tested those out myself though
Do you have plans to monetize this? I can think of a few options but they all feel pretty gross...
Yes, few options on the table but nothing set in stone yet. I want to keep the it accessible to as many people as possible, which is why I've been thinking of a 'free'-tier with some advertisements. Though I realize it can't be like Hulu with an aggravating amount of ads as that in itself will be too annoying.
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
I think something like letting users choose a certain number of games to buy for a reasonable amount, and then letting them host those games for players who don't own them is a good model.
For sure only one out of the party should ever need to buy anything in order to play. I think the model could work but there should also be some way to test drive the games before buying, otherwise it could be very hard to know which individual games to buy?
That's true - although I'd point out that most games have that issue. You could offer a way of easily swapping recent purchases, maybe?
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
> Yes, Gaming Couch is currently free to play!
Emphasis mine. Sounds like they're not ruling it out.
I mean, a one time fee, maybe even per mini-game, doesn't seem gross?
It doesn't seem gross, but that would introduce friction, which it seems like OP is against.
If that's considered bad then there really is no good way to make money from software in 2025.
Nice! Definitely showing this to the family over Xmas, great timing haha
Awesome! Let me know how it goes :)
Looks pretty cool. Is it open source? I'd love to have community contributed games
This would be so cool… community contributed games with ratings and themes. So much potential for a platform like this. Great work!
Agreed... also fwiw I don't think that langauge-dependent games are as much of a barrier as it used to be. I've built a game recently that I easily localized first with real-time AI translations and then later with more static language translations.
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
I think the issue with language-dependant games is not just knowing the correct translation - as OP points out, it's more about being funny or clever on the spot, which usually requires a certain level of understanding of the nuances of the language.
Exactly this! Translating the games themselves is not a big deal as that can be automated (although the quality of LLM-translations is not always the best) but when it comes to user generated responses given in a quick timeframe, that's when non-native english players struggle the most, at least in our own friend groups.
Thanks! The community ratings & games is something I've been thinking of as well. I wrote a more detailed reply of the system I've envisioned above :)
It's not open source but in the future once the 3rd party game development SDK has been published, community contributed games can be a reality.
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
Excellent work. I've played Jackbox party games before and they're a lot of fun!
Looks great. Like a more open and cuter version of, now enshittified, AirConsole.
AirConsole link for context: https://www.airconsole.com/
Thanks! I don't know if you knew but AirConsole was just recently sold to a car software manufacturer and now focuses mostly on in-car entertainment. They have big partnerships with Volkswagen for example.
Oh, I didn't know that. That explains quite a lot.
Looks so smooth and no fuss, thanks for building this
Very cool! Thanks for sharing. I would be making stuff like this if I didn't work for a legal team with a consumer electronics company attached to it.
Haha, I also have a background in law (in addition to the programming) and I've found that a stark context switch from e.g. reviewing contracts to writing code keeps the brain quite young! Or then it just deteriorates the brain faster and I'm already starting to rot... I guess the future will tell
Crazy Build
this is so cool
[flagged]
Golf clap good human.