My kid loves color-by-number apps, but every one we tried was packed with ads, "watch a video for more colors" prompts, timers, or "come back tomorrow" hooks. So I built my own: Color Quest (https://colorquestgame.com).
How it works: pick a pixel picture (animals, dinosaurs, space, treats, unicorns, holidays), tap a color, fill in the squares with that number. No timers, no lives, no losing progress — a wrong tap just gets a gentle hint. Coloring streaks earn "power tools" (paint brush, paint rain, a bomb that fills a patch). My kid is obsessed with the bomb.
How I built it: I paired Opus 5.5 for the heavy lifting (architecture, the gnarly puzzle-generation logic) with a local Qwen 3.8 running on my own GPUs for fast iteration — no API bills, no rate-limit waits. TypeScript + Vite, fully static site, zero backend. Domain was $10; total spend is basically the domain.
The best part: my 8-year-old was the PM. She doesn't type feedback — she just talks. Voice notes about which pictures she wanted, what felt boring, what was unfair — and I'd ship the next iteration. The bomb power tool exists because she demanded it.
A few things I cared about as a parent building for kids:
- Photo-to-puzzle: turn the family pet or a drawing into a puzzle. The photo never leaves the device.
- Print any picture and color it on paper.
- Works offline once added to the Home Screen. No accounts, progress lives in the browser.
- In Spanish and Vietnamese, since those are the languages in our house.
It's a hobby project — nothing to buy, I'm not selling anything. I'd love feedback from other parents (and builders who've shipped kids' products): what pictures would your kids want to color? And if you've ever marketed a kids' product with zero budget — what actually worked?
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