Hi Product Hunt! 👋

I'm Maciej, a dad of three and a software engineer from Warsaw. I recently made a small game called TowerPanic in my evenings and tried it with my kids (4, 6 and 11). They don't usually play video games, but all of us enjoyed it, which surprised me. So I made it public.

The game: there are 4 towers and each player stands on one. During a short round, towers crack and lean, but some are decoys. Before choices lock you read the signs and jump off the one that's really going down. No reading or fast fingers needed, just watching and deciding in time, so a young child can play with their parents.

How you play: together, each on your own screen. You start a game and show the QR code; your kids join from their own tablet or phone and type a name. It's all in real time: you see your kids' avatars on the towers, they see yours, and everyone sees who jumps where, and how late. Watching each other's reactions is half the fun. The whole family can play at once (up to 10 players), and for us that's when it's the most fun. Nothing to install, and you can also play solo on a single laptop. There's no chat and there are no ads: players only pick towers, and only people with your link can join.

Try it free, no account: https://towerpanic.com/p/75D6AE50

It starts your own private game: play solo right away, or send the link to someone to join you. A game lasts an hour (open the link again for another).

To be upfront: to host games from towerpanic.com you sign in with Google and get 14 days free (no card), then a one-time pass for a week, month or year. Nothing renews.

I think it could be a gentle first game to play together with a child, but I'm not sure, so I'd like to hear from you, parents or not:

- Did you (or your kids) enjoy it?

- Does it work as a first game with young children? Is anything too hard, too scary or confusing?

- What's missing, or what would you change?

Honest feedback is welcome, even if it's "my 5-year-old didn't get what to do".

For the curious: how it's built. I built it alone, in about 20 evenings: the idea, the game design and the backend are mine, and I made the frontend with AI, iterating until it felt right. Under the hood:

- WebSockets with my own protocol on top, so every player gets every change in the same order, even after a dropped connection, while the server's memory per game stays bounded

- Servers in Europe, the US and Japan; each game starts on the one with the lowest latency from your browser, so it stays responsive

- The account site and the game servers are separate apps, so I can ship a new version of either without ending anyone's game

I'll be here all day answering. Thanks for trying it!