Grandpa's Workshop

A Christmas adventure for the whole family on Fire TV. The remote flies a clockwork robin, phones become tools, paper drawings turn into 3D keys, and Alexa remembers your night.

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Inspiration

I always loved point and click games (Broken Sword, Monkey Island...) This is a more interactive point and click where all the family can join and play!

What it does

Over 13 short chapters the family wakes Jingle, his clockwork robin, and lights the machine:

  • The remote flies Jingle, who is the pointer on the TV.
  • Phones are tools, not screens: scan a QR code, no app. Shake, take photos, tilt to balance a gear, dance and freeze.
  • Paper drawings come alive: a drawn key becomes a 3D brass key that opens the door on the TV.
  • Alexa remembers the night and only opens the star's box for a family that remembers what they did.
  • Purchases you can see: buy Jingle a knitted scarf (Vega In-App Purchasing) and he wears it all night. The next adventure can be bought through Alexa, approved on a grown-up's phone.
  • Grandpa writes back with a personal letter that Amazon Nova writes from everything the family did.

How we built it

  • Fire TV (Vega OS): a React Native shell from the vegaWebview template, with the remote via useTVEventHandler and Vega In-App Purchasing bridged to the web game.
  • Game server: Node and Hono on Amazon EC2, with live state over Server-Sent Events.
  • Alexa+: the game's own MCP server (spec 2025-11-25, Streamable HTTP, 9 tools with cards). A simulated Alexa powered by Nova is a real MCP client of it.
  • Amazon Bedrock (Nova 2 Lite): judges every photo, writes Jingle's lines and Grandpa's letter.
  • Phones and art: three.js on the phones, scenes rendered in Blender, voices by ElevenLabs.

Challenges we ran into

The Vega WebView never passes the remote's OK to the page, blocks http://, and always consumes Back, so all three are handled in the native shell. Also, making 20 minutes hold together as one story where every puzzle has a reason, for kids who share one phone.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Connecting the tv app with the real world so not everything is just about point and click :)

What we learned

The WebView template is the fastest road from a web game to Fire TV, but the remote needs a thin native layer to feel right. And an AI judge for children's drawings has to be told to be generous.

What's next for Grandpa's Workshop

Turning it into a real app on the Fire TV Appstore before next Christmas: more stories, polish on every chapter, and a real Alexa+ add-on on the same MCP server once add-ons open.

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