work / pixel-office · MVP
Pixel Office
A retro pixel virtual office with proximity voice chat.
Week of Claude Maxing
Play with it
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.
loading the demo…
The problem
Remote teams lose the ambient presence of a shared room.
What it does
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.
The thinking
Target user
Small remote teams and friend groups who miss ambient presence, not another meeting tool.
Pain points
- Remote work loses the walk-over-and-ask moment
- Video calls are all-or-nothing: full meeting or total silence
Gap in the market
A browser-only pixel office with spatial voice (louder as you walk closer) and zero backend to host, where the URL is the invite.
AI + tooling
- Playroom Kit (multiplayer state)
- WebRTC mesh + Web Audio
- Claude Code (build)
- Procedural pixel sprites
Frameworks
- Proxemics: spatial audio mirrors physical distance, so conversation feels natural
- Ambient presence over scheduled meetings
- Render-from-state (no game engine)
Success metrics
- TBD: needs a real multi-device pilot first
Never hand-roll netcode. Presence, rooms and state came free; only the voice mesh was worth building.