Sometimes the best projects start with a simple idea: what if the kids could make their own games?

That’s how Helena & Teodor’s Game Lab came about — a small website where my children, Helena and Teodor, get to have their own collection of browser games. The concept is straightforward: a colourful landing page that showcases each game, and clicking “Play” takes you straight in. No downloads, no installs, just open and play.

The Idea

I wanted to build something that sits at the intersection of two things I care about: spending time with my kids and learning new skills. The Game Lab is both a playground for them and a real project for me. Every game that goes on the site is a small collaboration — the kids come up with the ideas, describe what they want, and we figure out how to bring it to life.

The first game was a classic Hangman — simple enough to get things rolling. The second, Banano, was Teodor’s brainchild: a platform game where a young gorilla has to collect bananas to feed his family, jumping between tree branches while dodging banana peels thrown by cheeky chimpanzees. Think Donkey Kong, but with a jungle twist and an 8-bit retro feel.

Why It Matters

For the kids, it’s about seeing something they imagined become real. There’s a moment when they open the browser, see their game on the landing page with its own card and emoji, and realise they made that. That feeling is hard to beat.

For me, it’s a proper end-to-end project. The site runs on a self-hosted server, gets deployed automatically when we push new code, and uses the same tools and workflows I’d use in a professional setting. It’s a real application with real infrastructure behind it — it just happens to be full of gorillas and bananas.

What’s Next

More games. Helena has ideas. Teodor has ideas. The landing page is designed to grow — drop in a new folder, add a line to a config file, and it appears on the site automatically. The pipeline handles the rest.

It’s a small project, but it’s ours. And every time one of them says “Dad, can we add another game?” — that’s a win.