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work / pixel-office · Live · MVP

Pixel Office

A retro pixel virtual office with proximity voice chat.

Week of Claude MaxingOpen the live app

The COVID-era virtual offices fascinated me, and the problem they were solving has not gone away. Working from home, you lose the tap on the shoulder: the quick word with a colleague that never warranted a meeting. Booking a calendar slot for a two-minute question is exhausting, and messaging often lands badly. So: a room where you can see who is around and open to talking, walk over, and let others join the conversation if it is open.

Why I built it

Remote teams lose the ambient presence of a shared room.

The problem

A multiplayer pixel-art office: walk between rooms, emote, set a status, and talk. Voice is a WebRTC mesh with per-peer volume by distance, so conversations feel spatial.

What it does
  • React
  • Playroom Kit
  • WebRTC
  • Web Audio
Stack
Never hand-roll netcode. Presence, rooms and state came free; only the voice mesh was worth building.
What I learned

Screenshots from the app in actual use, not mockups.

The Pixel Office lounge: a pixel-art room with characters standing near desks and sofas, an emote bar along the bottom and a join-voice button.
The Pixel Office character creator, with options for skin, hair, shirt, outfit, hat and pet before entering the office.

The real thing

A pure-frontend replica with mock data: nothing is saved, nothing leaves the page. The real app is richer; this is the feel of it.

Prefer the real thing? Open the live app

loading the demo…

Play with it

The thinking

user · pains · gap · tools

Small remote teams and friend groups who miss ambient presence, not another meeting tool.

Target user

  • Remote work loses the walk-over-and-ask moment
  • Video calls are all-or-nothing: full meeting or total silence

Pain points

A browser-only pixel office with spatial voice (louder as you walk closer) and zero backend to host, where the URL is the invite.

Gap in the market

  • Playroom Kit (multiplayer state)
  • WebRTC mesh + Web Audio
  • Claude Code (build)
  • Procedural pixel sprites

AI + tooling

  • Proxemics: spatial audio mirrors physical distance, so conversation feels natural
  • Ambient presence over scheduled meetings
  • Render-from-state (no game engine)

Frameworks

  • Pilot done: ran a session with a group of friends and it worked as intended, with multiple users connected and proximity voice holding up
  • TBD: a longer run with a real team rather than a one-off test

Success metrics

Photograph your wardrobe once, get outfits with reasons.

Next: F-Try

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