Right now the default is a tablet, YouTube on autoplay, and games engineered to never let go. Kids get hooked, parents feel guilty, and nobody's really having a good time. We call the result the iPad baby — and we'd like to make fewer of them.
Screens aren't the enemy. A screen can be calm, funny, and genuinely good for a small brain — if the thing on it was built for the kid, instead of built to farm their attention.
Parents buy it because they trust it. Kids play it because it's fun. Those are different jobs and we take both seriously — the grown-up has to feel good handing it over, and the kid has to not want to give it back.
The only customer is the parent who pays. Your child's attention is never the product — and that's not a compromise, it's the whole pitch.
This is the soul of the company. Break these and it isn't a Hufflepuff game.
A 4-year-old who can't read understands the goal in two seconds. Spray. Sort. Find.
Exciting, funny, a little thrilling — upside-down dragons, a yeti on your tail — that's what holds attention. The big juicy payoff lands only once the kid solves the puzzle or finishes the job. Reward for effort, never a slot machine.
Sound and pictures carry everything. We don't read at the kid. No yapping.
You reach a goal and then you're done. No feed, no autoplay-next. This is our answer to brainrot.
Exciting and finite at the same time — that tension is the trick we're trying to pull off.
Splits below are time & effort — hours each of us actually puts in, not equity.
Owns: Implementation, production, gameplay, systems, deployment. If it runs, ships, or has to work on a real device — it's his.
Owns: Marketing, business operations, company registration, compliance, sales. Gets Hufflepuff legally born and into parents' hands.
Owns: Creative inspiration, sound, and the warmth that keeps a game feeling alive instead of clinical. Plus a consulting brief — is this fun and good for a 4–6 year old?
A house is on fire. You grab the hose, you spray, the fire goes out, everyone cheers. Maybe next there's a car to fix. That's it — and that's the point.
A game that runs in a browser, handed to a six-year-old who's never seen it — they tap and play, with no instructions, no help, no words. "Done" means a real kid did exactly that, not that we think they could.
Platform: v0 lives in the browser — playable at a link.
The firetruck MVP, playable at a link. The thing this whole doc is about.
The same game wrapped as real apps for phone and laptop. Installable, works offline.
On the devices kids actually use: iPad and the TV.
v0 ships without a developmental consultant or a dedicated game designer — and that's deliberate. Its only job is to show we can make a real game and get it live. The next one can be more targeted, with someone owning what's right for a 4–6 year old.
How we run: a phone call every two weeks. Everyone reports what moved.
One focused job each, to bring back in two weeks.
The stack. The minimal foundation that ships v0 — plus a one-pager on what v1/v2 would take. What ships and what scales are separate questions; v0 only has to prove we can build and ship.
Monetization — and what company we are. Subscription to a growing platform, or a one-time price per game? It's bigger than pricing: one-time makes us a studio (each game stands alone), subscription makes us a platform that lives on shipping new games. Bring the trade-offs.
What makes the truck game good. Consulting, research, and focused inspiration — pin down why the firetruck is a strong example of what we're going for.