In Wii style, you only swing
In Auto run the kids run to the ball on an exact prediction of where it'll land, and you only swing: tap for a dink, swipe sideways to drive, up to lob, down to smash.
Case study
Pickle Kids
Wii-style pickleball, with the real scoring
A doubles pickleball game with several shot types that plays easily on a phone. It was asked for, built and launched on October 9, 2026, and corrected the same day to real side-out scoring.
- Sport
- Pickleball doubles
- Asked for
- October 9, 2026
- Live since
- October 9, 2026
- Plays on
- iPads, Chromebooks, phones, laptops
The brief
The ask was a pickleball game with multiple shot types and Wii-style play, called Pickle Kids, made from the soccer and hockey assets. A paddle sport is a different game from soccer or hockey, so the sports code had to change a lot, while the kids, the park and the controls could carry over.
What we decided, and why
A camera that suits paper kids
The kid drawings are side-on, so a camera straight behind the baseline would show everyone in profile. The court is seen three-quarters from behind your end instead.
Lower gravity, longer rallies
With real gravity, slow kid-strength drives looped in at head height and every rally turned into smashes. Gravity is turned down to about 70 percent of real, fast shots get a set flight time, and kids backpedal at two-thirds speed so a good lob can beat them.
Short games
Games go to 7 by default, with 11 as an option, win by 2. Blue is Ziggy and Maya, Red is Leo and Priya.
Play-test rounds
Each round started with somebody playing the latest build and saying what was wrong. Here is what they said, and what changed.
- 1
Feedback
Add a Hit button you hold longer to hit harder, a Dink button, and joystick play.
What changed
Touch screens can't read pressure, so hold time became power and Hit swings when you let go. Simple, Advanced and Auto run styles arrived, and the kid the ball is heading to is highlighted.
- 2
Feedback
Make it one player and a computer teammate against two computers.
What changed
You play the first kid on your team. The teammate runs, hits and serves on its own, and Simple mode walks your kid back into position when you let go of the stick.
- 3
Feedback
The buttons are too big.
What changed
Hit shrank to 96 pixels and Dink and Lob to 70, all fading to see-through a moment into a game, and the overhead camera zoomed out.
- 4
Feedback
Two serves per side, except the first serve.
What changed
Rally scoring was replaced with real side-out scoring: only the serving team scores, the game starts at 0-0-2, and after a side out the right-side kid serves first.
Under the hood The hard parts, and how it is built. For the curious.
Power without pressure
Phones can't tell how hard a finger presses, so hold time stands in for power and the release is your timing. A tap is a gentle drive that takes 1.15 seconds to cross; a full hold is a 0.6 second rocket that skims the net and strays more.
Balancing against a bot that's too good
The test bot's timing spread turned out to be the dial that matters, not its shot choice. In Auto run on Medium it won 13, 5 and 1 of 14 games at spreads of 0.06, 0.10 and 0.15 seconds. Hard was eased once when nobody could beat it.
Scoring nobody gets right the first time
Side-out scoring has a server swap after each point, a partner serve after a lost rally and a side out after the second. Even the test helpers had to learn to serve when it was their turn, or games stalled.
How it is built
Pickle Kids is another copy of Soccer Kids, keeping the kids, the park art, the sound and the touch controls. The sports code is new: ball flight with drag, bounces and the net, and a shot solver that finds the launch for a chosen landing spot and flight time.
A separate simulation holds the rules, the serve rotation and the swing window, and the computer decides which kid meets each ball. Balance is set with Node bots, and the touch checks use two real fingers at once.
- JavaScript modules
- Canvas 2D
- Web Audio
- Ball flight solver
- Node balance bots
- Two-finger touch tests
What it teaches
- Side-out scoring: only the serving team scores, and each side gets two servers
- Calling the score the way players do, like 4-2-1
- The kitchen: no volleys from the zone next to the net
- The two-bounce rule
- When to dink, when to lob and when to drive
From the finished game
The result
Live on ziggy.games since October 9, 2026, free to play. A second human player and a practice mode are the next ideas on the list.
What this means for your game
Even a sport that plays nothing like soccer fits the engine. If your kid plays it, we can probably build it, with the real rules taught by playing them.
Want a game like this?
We build games around one kid, one team or one school, the same way we built this one: with the people who will play it in the loop. Start with your player.