Recent content on GAMETJE
I just had an amazing experience in my son’s classroom. It is the last week of school before the summer break so my son’s teacher was looking for activities to keep the kids entertained. My son had been bragging to his teacher about Gametje for a while so the teacher was aware of what I did for work. I was lucky enough to be invited to show off the games this morning at the school.
You heard it here folks. I’m introducing a spinoff site for daily games. Think of it a bit like Wordle but directly tied to the games on my 
main site . The first daily game I am creating will be a new concept called Noun Sense . 
 
 
 
 It’s a game about adjective and noun association. The basic gameplay loop is simple: you are given 10 adjectives each day, and you…
Prior to attending 
PGConnects London , I released a new game called “Paka Paka” (Swahili for “Cat Cat”). 
 
 
 
 It’s a game about recognizing animal sounds. It fits my platform perfectly. It is fun for both kids and adults, it’s easily localized to most/all languages, it’s easy to understand and it’s nice to look at. With the…
Currently riding the train back from London to Rotterdam after attending my first real game conference. I’ve never talked so much in my life. It was like having back to back interviews all day. Selling both Gametje and myself to other people and companies. I made some great connections and got some good feedback on Gametje and the games. Here’s a quick look at my booth: 
 
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This “new” game has a special place in my heart. It’s a re-imagining of a game I played all the time in high school back in the early 2000s. Late nights spent with friends pre-cable internet. Using our AOL connections and firing up 
Acrophobia . Making inside jokes and coming up with clever acronyms to make each other laugh (and hopefully score points too!). I actually wrote…
Gametje hit the front page of 
HackerNews ! 
 For those of you that don’t know what HackerNews is, it’s a social news website mainly focused on tech topics with a focus on entrepreneurship and start-ups. It is run by 
Y Combinator which is a start up incubator in San Francisco, California. 
 I’ve been an avid reader of HackerNews for 12+ years. It’s part of…
A couple weeks ago (November 5th), I had the pleasure of attending the 
Dutch Games Association (DGA) Network Lunch in Utrecht, hosted by Slashdot. I signed up to be one of the showcases and luckily I was selected! That gave me a chance to show off Gametje to others and get some feedback in person. I haven’t done anything like this before, so I was a little bit nervous. It would be the…
I’m back at it! I was on vacation in the Ardennes (Belgium) with my family and some friends. It was a bit rainy but we enjoyed all the outdoor time and fresh air. 
 
Let's get to today's topic: AI players in Canvas Clash!
 The issue 
 Canvas Clash has been out for about a year and has been one of the most 
popular games on the platform but it has always had one major…
On October 10th, 2025, we had our first Gametje night at 
Het Rotterdam Collectief . Our first event had 8 people (and my 2 kids) present for the fun. Most joiners had not played any of my the games before. 
 
 
 
 We had a mixture of nationalities present including Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, American, and Polish. Quite the diverse crowd! We had some delicious…
In the last 30 days, Gametje has been played in over 40 countries and over 60 countries in the last 6 months! I’m really blown away by how far it has reached with basically no advertising. It is always interesting to get a new country trying it out and makes me wonder “How did you find it?”. I wish I had a way to reach out to them.
Full time? 
 Gametje has been a side project of mine since January 2023. For the first 2 years or so, I had 12-15 hours a week to work on it (+ evenings). In January 2025, I took on another freelance job alongside my regular part-time job so I have only been able to work during my evenings and weekends. Progress was slow and I haven’t been able to execute on all the ideas I have had for…
Gametje V1 
 If you have read my 
about page , you may remember that I did an initial implementation of a couple games back in the Fall of 2017. I mainly did it at the time to learn NodeJS which was all the rage back then. I was able to build the frontend and backend in the same code base and it mostly worked. I also deployed it using the Heroku free tier which was pretty neat. At the…
Getting Ideas 
 My kids have been bugging me about creating another game that they can play. I already have RPS SHOOT which is a twist on the classic Rock, Paper, Scissors game that they enjoy, but that game is nearly a year old now. Kids get bored easily and always want a shiny new thing to play with after all. My daughter is not able to read that well yet so I knew I needed to do something…
New Game - Sync Think 
 I have been working on a new game that is currently available for Alpha testers. The working title is ‘Sync Think’. The general idea is for players to submit a random word or phrase and then work together to converge on a single word. The faster you match with another player, the more points you’ll score. It is inspired by this improv game called…
Welcome to the first Gametje blog. I plan on documenting development progress and other technical decisions/research that goes into making the games on gametje.com
My name is John. I’ve been telling computers what to do for 20+ years. I currently live in Rotterdam, Netherlands with my wife and two kids. I enjoy playing tennis, disc golf, and just about any other sport. I also love video games which was my main entry into programming/technology. 
 
 Motivation behind Gametje 
 I first came up with the idea in 2015, shortly after moving to…