The idea is simple: I love local multiplayer games and game nights but felt that there was always too much hassle with switching between different titles and connecting 4-8 controllers to one PC or console. Jackbox worked great but they relied too much on language and didn't work when the group had people not fluent in english.
Therefore I decided to create a site that is dedicated to action-oriented party games. So no trivia or language based games. When I first showed the idea here on HN, other forums and game fairs, I received a lot of questions from fellow game devs asking if they could bring their own game ideas to the platform as well. I started to work on third-party development tools, which are now in private beta. Last Friday was a big moment as the first 3rd party game was launched on the platform!! https://gamingcouch.com/blog/protostellar-impact-launch
I'm now looking for more game devs interested in making fun party minigames, if you're interested, check out https://gamingcouch.com/developers and hit me up either here, by mail (from my profile) or by joining the community Discord and pinging me!
The TL;DR of Gaming Couch:
- Free Early Access with +20 competitive mini-games.
- Players use their phones as controllers (gamepads work too).
- Completely web-based, no downloads or installs needed.
- Every game supports up to 8 players and is action-based, with quick ~1 minute rounds to keep a good pace. No language-based trivia or asynchronous (turn based) games.