Family Room

iPhone · iPad · Apple TV

The phones in the room
are the game table.

Eleven party games built in. No accounts, no room codes, no internet.

One person hosts, everyone else taps Join. The phones find each other over your Wi-Fi — or directly, when there is no network at all. An Apple TV or an iPad becomes the shared screen: it shows the board everybody argues over, and never anybody's private hand.

Make your own game Open the Studio

Coming to the App Store. The dev kit is free and open source today.

Bring your own game

This is the whole point.

A Family Room game is a folder with three files in it: a manifest, an HTML file and a JavaScript file. Write one by hand, or describe the game you want to an AI and let it write one — then zip the folder, send it to a friend, and import it in the app. It plays on everyone's phone with the TV as the table, exactly like the built-in games, because there is no difference between them.

🧰

No Mac required

The dev kit is plain JavaScript and runs on node. No Xcode, no account, no build step, no toolchain to install.

🤖

Bots play it for you

A headless harness boots virtual phones and plays your game to the end, hundreds of times, on a virtual clock. It fails the build if your game can hang, throw, or finish without a winner.

📺

The Studio, in a tab

Eight phones and a TV side by side in the browser, with the real SDK behind them. Edit, reload, play. Try it now.

Why a zip and not a store? Because a game you made for six specific people at one specific party should not need anybody's approval, and should not stop working when a server goes away. A bundle is a file. Files keep.

How a game night actually goes

  1. Someone hosts. They pick a game and the room gets a name — theirs. Nothing is typed in, nothing is scanned.
  2. Everybody else taps Join. Their phone is already listing the room. Pick your emoji and your name once, and it is yours from then on.
  3. Point a screen at the table. Open the app on an Apple TV or an iPad and it becomes the board. Optional — every game plays without one.
  4. Play. Then play something else. Rematch or switch games without anybody rejoining. If a phone dies, the table pauses and holds that seat until it is back.

Eleven games, included

SCRAMBLETrace words on a shared grid. A word somebody else found is worth less.
STREAKPress your luck, one card at a time.
FISHBOWLThree rounds, one bowl of words, two teams.
MELTDOWNShout instructions at each other before the reactor blows.
SUMMITA two-player expedition of nerve.
TAPASDraft small plates, pass the rest.
TEMPOKeep the rhythm, alone or together.
PASS THE BOMBAnswer and pass. Do not be holding it.
THE DETONATORCut a wire. Hope it was the right one.
CAPTAIN SAYSDo what the captain says, not what the captain does.
LOOK AWAYPoint on three. Match and you are out.

Some games want teams, some play solo, and SCRAMBLE has occasion themes — pick Christmas or a baby shower and it changes both the words that score and the colours on every screen.

No account. No server. No internet.

Family Room never asks who you are, because there is nothing to sign in to. There is no backend: the host's phone is the server, and the only network traffic is between the devices in your room. It works on a plane. It will keep working the day I stop paying for anything, which is a promise most party apps cannot make.

Nothing is collected

No analytics, no crash reporting, no third-party SDKs, no identifiers. The privacy policy is short because there is nothing to describe.

Nothing leaves the room

Names, emoji and the words you type during a game exist on the devices playing it and nowhere else.

Imported games are offline too

A bundle cannot reach the network at all — the validator rejects any attempt, so a game you were sent cannot phone home.