My 6-year-old wanted to build a space shooter where “everything should be fast and explode.” So instead of overthinking it, I let him steer the direction — more enemies, faster movement, random avocados showing up for no real reason — and I handled the actual implementation. I built the movement + drift system, shooting mechanics and tried to make it at least somewhat playable. The “feel” of drifting in space took way longer than expected. Getting that right without it feeling floaty or sluggish was harder than I thought. It’s built with Phaser and wrapped inside a Next.js app. There’s a very simple leaderboard (SQLite + basic HMAC-based run validation). No accounts, no monetization — just open the browser and play. A few things I didn’t expect: Kids really don’t care about balance at all. Mobile controls are harder than desktop in every possible way. Basic anti-cheat for a browser score system is more annoying than the game logic itself. Curious what other devs think about embedding something like Phaser inside a React/Next setup. Also interested in lightweight approaches to score validation that don’t turn into a full backend project. Happy to answer questions.