It started at bedtime, and then it followed us everywhere - the back seat, restaurants, waiting rooms. Wherever we ended up with a few minutes together, we were always on the lookout for something we could all actually do as a family.
Our go-to became Mad Libs. When the food was taking longer than our suddenly-starving children could handle, or when the restlessness started creeping in, we'd pull one out and go around the table - each kid picking a word on their turn, until we had a full story to read back together. The reveal at the end was always the best part. The only problem was running out of books.
The problem with pen-and-paper
The books were great when we had them, but we didn't always have them. And once we'd done a story, it was done - reusing a filled-in book is rough. Buying two copies of the same one just so each kid could have their own felt like a workaround, not a solution.
I started looking for apps. There wasn't much worth using. The original Mad Libs app had been discontinued on Android. What remained felt dated, cluttered with ads, or just not built with kids in mind. None of them quite hit what I was looking for.
I wanted something the kids could pick up on their own when they were in the mood, not just a family-table activity. I wanted clearer prompts that told them exactly what kind of word to enter. And honestly, once I started thinking about it, I had a running list of ideas that could make the whole experience richer. I'm a developer. I figured: let me just build it.
The parts of speech thing
The one thing I kept hearing while we played was: "Daddy, what's a verb?" "What's a noun?" "What's an adjective?" Every session, same questions.
Rather than answer them every time, I baked the explanations directly into the game. Tap the label on any blank and you get a plain-English breakdown of what that word type means, with examples. They'd also sometimes get stuck ("I can't think of anything"), so I added suggestions too: a handful of options to pick from, or just enough to get the wheels turning so they could type their own.
It turned something that could have felt like homework into something that felt like a cheat code. They weren't memorizing definitions. They were using the words, and when the story came together, they could see exactly why each one mattered.
What I wanted to build
A few things were non-negotiable for me:
- Always free to play. I want families to be able to jump in without pulling out a credit card. The core game will always be free. Down the road there may be additional story packs, but there will always be plenty to play without paying a dime.
- Kid-safe ads only, and as few as possible. Any ads in the app go through a kid-appropriate network: no targeting, no data collection, nothing creepy. And I'm not going to plaster them everywhere. Fun first.
- Works everywhere. Web, Android, iPhone. No reason a family game should be locked to one platform.
- Shareable. The finished story should be easy to screenshot and send to grandparents. That moment of sharing is half the fun.
Giggle Gaps is still early. More stories are coming, and there's a lot I want to build. But the core loop works. We tested it on my boys. They still ask to play.
That's all the validation I needed.