[HN Gopher] Show HN: Gametje - A casual online gaming platform
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Show HN: Gametje - A casual online gaming platform
Hi all, I've been working on this project for a while but haven't
shared it properly on Hacker News. It is a casual gaming platform
focused on simple multiplayer games that can be played in person
with a central screen (like a TV) or remotely via video chat. You
can also play on your smart Android based TVs via the app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gametje (it was
just released recently so could be buggy). It is also available
directly in Discord:
https://discord.com/discovery/applications/12153230008666071... as
an embedded activity. It is playable in 9 languages and doesn't
require any downloads. Most games revolve around creativity in some
shape or form. They can be played by just about anyone whether or
not you consider yourself a "gamer". If you can text, you can play
these games. Why did I create it? Some of you may see the
resemblance to Jackbox games. I have been a huge fan of them for
10+ years and enjoyed playing their games a lot. However, I found
their support for other languages a bit lacking. While living in
the Netherlands, I have encountered quite a few non-native English
speakers and wanted to help them have a similar experience. Jackbox
also has some fragmentation issues between app stores. I own their
games on PC and PS4 but I can't share a "license" between them.
They also come out with a pack every year with 5 games. You never
know if the game(s) will be fun, or if you should try to buy a
previous pack with the one killer party game in it. I designed
Gametje with these issues in mind. It is playable in multiple
languages with more being added regularly (feel free to request
one). You can play it from any device with a web browser. There is
no need to install it via Steam or a game console. All games are
available in one place with no "packs" to buy. What's up with the
name? I have been living in the Netherlands for some years and
part of my original motivation stems from wanting to give my
friends here a game to play in their native language. It's way
easier to be witty/funny in your mother tongue after all! Because
of that, I wanted to incorporate something Dutch into the site's
name. The suffix '-tje' is one of the diminutive endings in Dutch
and is meant to soften a word or make it "smaller". Game + tje =
Gametje, or a little game. I have been informed by native Dutch
speakers that it should have been 'Gamepje' to be "correct" but I
liked the way Gametje sounded better. Where can I try it? Go
here: https://gametje.com/ You can test it out as a guest without
signing up in order to get a feel for the games. Clicking into each
game gives a short explanation and a small example of the gameplay.
When creating a game room, you can choose to host via a central
screen, host and play from a single device (like a phone) or cast
the main screen to a Chromecast. There is also an Android TV app
available that was just recently released:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gametje After
creating a game room, you can join from another browser window or
device. You can also add AI players if you want to try it out on
your own, although it is a lot more fun with real people. I also
created a discord channel: https://discord.gg/7jrftHuHp9 where you
can find other users to play with. If you sign up for an account,
you can opt-in as an alpha tester and see the new games as they are
developed. It'll also keep track of all your previous games and
make sure not to duplicate content. You can review previous games
as well and relish in your past victories. What am I looking for?
I am interested in feedback about the whole concept and also the
gameplay. Is it fun? What could be improved? Interested in helping
out? Let me know! Happy to share the more technical details as
well for those that are interested. You can also read a bit about
the platform and games in my blog: https://blog.gametje.com/
Thanks!
Author : jmpavlec
Score : 91 points
Date : 2025-11-11 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gametje.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gametje.com)
| ChaosOp wrote:
| This is a great idea! I'm not a fan of Jackbox's "pack"
| distribution model, so supporting any project that challenges it
| :)
| kabes wrote:
| There are certain Dutch dialects (e.g. west flemish) that would
| say gametje instead of gamepje. So you were not entirely wrong.
| j4coh wrote:
| Apart from that it could be taken to mean "little sperm or egg
| cell".
| rapnie wrote:
| The Dutch naming immediately struck my eye. I wonder.. it is
| not an easy name to pronounce for, say, English-speaking
| people, is it? Even in Dutch it does roll from the tongue a bit
| awkwardly imho.
| freitzzz wrote:
| Cool idea, but you need to polish the UI. It looks completely
| generated by LLM (that's bad)
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| To me the UI looks clean and fine for a first version,
| definitely not like a [insert famous website] clone, which is
| what comes easily with llms.
| jmpavlec wrote:
| Author here, UI needs some work indeed. Given that I am a one
| man show and I'm mainly a backend developer, I did what I
| could. I've been trying to improve where I can.
|
| What makes you say it is LLM generated? I have used some AI for
| images/avatars etc but not any of the frontend code/style.
| Using MUI with React for most of the components.
|
| Open to any collaborators with good design/frontend skills.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| imho it's absolutely fine, and doesn't look AI generated at
| all. AI would be way more generic / polished, this design
| actually reminds me a bit of 10-20 years ago websites, it's
| cool and retro in a way.
| yapyap wrote:
| > this design actually reminds me a bit of 10-20 years ago
| websites
|
| what do you think the LLMs were trained on
| avgDev wrote:
| It looks fine to me, but I am fullstack and build apps that
| need to function.
| rapnie wrote:
| > Open to any collaborators with good design/frontend skills.
|
| Are you inviting people to join your business, or is there an
| open source project to contribute to?
| jmpavlec wrote:
| I'm open to people joining the business. At the moment, it
| is not open source.
| energy123 wrote:
| Low friction co-op games are an underserved market, but none of
| these games are for me. I'd be a user if it was a challenging co-
| op tower defense or bullet hell game, even if the graphics were
| bad.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Man, I really want a good coop tower defense game! Loved the
| warcraft 3 tower defense co-op games!
| energy123 wrote:
| Consider Legion TD 2 or Bloons TD 6 in Steam, they have some
| co-op. I recommend Bloons TD 6.
| Thundernerd wrote:
| I don't think it looks as AI generated as people say. It might
| not be the most flashy UI but it looks good enough to me. Good
| luck with the launch!
|
| I have to say that as a Dutch person it always pains me to see
| products launch internationally with a Dutch name, for some
| reason it just feels super cringy. Do other people who's native
| language isn't English have that as well with their own language?
| laurentiurad wrote:
| ok
| sim7c00 wrote:
| i have the same in dutch. same with music and tv shows tho. i
| guess its just a perception of our own language since most our
| media is in english?
| Fnoord wrote:
| Ah yes, the game I know as 'pictionary'. There used to be an
| implementation of this on a website using Macromedia Shockwave.
| You'd have public rooms where you could start guessing. The
| person with most points would be next drawer. It was fantastic in
| start, but also a place where young kids would play, and some let
| us just define them as older kids who would ruin it by doing
| things like drawing dick pictures. Eventually, nobody would use
| Shockwave anymore, and you wouldn't even want to run such in a
| production environment anymore.
|
| As for the name, boompje means little tree (kleine boom) but
| boontje means little bean (kleine boon) and koninkje means little
| king (kleine koning) but little queen would be koninginnetje
| (kleine koningin), and finally hoopje would mean little hope
| (kleine hoop). So while -tje is default, there are variations. If
| the word ends with -m, you do -pje. In this case, we have a word
| derived from English (game) and we need to use the way it sounds
| (geem) hence geempje (gamepje).
|
| For a foreigner dealing with The Netherlands and Dutch, gametje
| sounds cute. It fits the role, so to say. In multiple ways. This
| is a kids/family game, and kids make simple mistakes in grammar
| when learning their native language, like adult foreigners do
| when learning a new language. The earlier mentioned website (I
| forgot the name, something like iSketch? Yes that was it [1])
| existed before emoji were a thing. You'd have emoticons but not
| as part of a font , unless you count say wingdings or using
| (foreign language) symbols like :-) and more complex ones such as
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISketch
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I tried to build something like this during covid and got into
| the weeds around syncing a vuex store across server/client based
| on pinia (https://pinia.vuejs.org). Vue3 separated the reactivity
| model from the framework so when the server made a change, it
| forwarded the event automatically to clients. Since the game
| state was a series of mutations, it made it easy to replay on a
| client along with net code style rollback in the case of
| conflicts.
|
| All told, congrats shipping something!
| dandeto wrote:
| Very cool! What engine/tech stack did you use to write the games
| themselves?
| jmpavlec wrote:
| The frontend is written in Typescript/React (Vite) and the
| backend is Java + Spring Boot + Redis + Postgres. I'm using
| WebSockets for interactivity.
| ivolimmen wrote:
| I kinda guessed you would be Dutch given the name. Lovely idee,
| will try this out when I have time. Bedankt!
| kurtis_reed wrote:
| No idea how to pronounce it
| sudosteph wrote:
| Reminds me a lot of AirConsole, which I once had a subscription
| to.
|
| But ultimately it all comes down to the game quality and how
| buggy it is. If people can't submit their answer or reconnect,
| that wears down support. But people tolerate jackbox's absolutely
| terrible system because the games are great.
| jmpavlec wrote:
| Did you have problems trying it out? I've been monitoring the
| metrics. Seems to be healthy but maybe I am missing something?
| prakhar897 wrote:
| How long did it take for you to make this? I'm working on a
| similar branch of idea, started 30 days ago. Any advice for me?
| :)
| jmpavlec wrote:
| It's been a part-time project since January 2023. I left my
| part-time job in July and started on this full-time in August
| after some vacation. Here's a recent blog post about going
| full-time: https://blog.gametje.com/posts/2025-09-16/
|
| Would love to connect and trade some ideas. You can find my
| contact details at the bottom of the blog.
| Phemist wrote:
| Although strictly speaking it is wrongly spelled as you
| mentioned, you missed that "Game met je" means "to (play a) game
| with you (or someone)", which could contract to "gametje" as well
| (and a similar contraction for "gamepje" would be much more
| violent ;)). I think this makes "gametje" an excellent name for a
| party game platform!
| jmpavlec wrote:
| I feel like a moron for never seeing this after 2.5 years :-D.
| Thanks for pointing it out! Maybe I'll make a cute animation of
| the contraction for a loading screen. I'll make sure to credit
| you.
| Phemist wrote:
| Well, if Dutch is your second language for sure it is
| difficult to see.
|
| "Gamen" is one of those anglicisms that has made it into the
| language, with ugly but in this case useful conjugations:
| Ik game met je (I (play a) game with you) Hij gamet
| met je (he plays a game with you, this is especially nice
| because of the repeating "met") Zij gamet met je (she
| *) Wij gamen met je (we *) Zij/Hun gamen met
| je (they *)
| password4321 wrote:
| related on 'What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)' at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869146#45886256
|
| > _I 'm working on a local multiplayer party game platform, a
| lovechild of Jackbox Games and Mario Party:
| https://gamingcouch.com_
| jmpavlec wrote:
| I actually know these guys. Definitely give their platform a
| look!
| ChaosOp wrote:
| That's my project (and comment), thanks for the mention! Local
| multiplayer is simply the best, and the more options there are,
| the better!
| rwkim7 wrote:
| Very cool, congrats on the launch...will try it with my friends
| soon! Wish this was around during covid lockdowns lol
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(page generated 2025-11-11 23:01 UTC)