Indoor active games for kids

Every list of indoor active games for kids has the same entries — balloon keep-up, a cushion obstacle course, freeze dance, hide and seek — and they all share the same weak point: a grown-up has to run them. Somebody has to be the music that stops, the judge who says who moved, the one who counts the jumps. After the third round on a rainy Sunday that somebody is tired.

A screen that watches the kid takes that job. Hopla is 35 free movement games played through the webcam: the browser sees the body on your own device and the game answers what it does. Jump and the character clears the bar, duck and the training pole sails over, kick the rolling ball into the fire bowl, freeze when the music stops and the game — not you — decides who moved. Nobody holds a controller, so there is nothing to fight over, and nobody needs an account, so it is on the screen in the time it takes to allow the camera.

It fits a small room. Two metres of clear floor in front of a laptop, a tablet propped on a shelf or a computer plugged into the TV is the whole setup — no equipment, nothing that gets thrown, nothing that breaks a lamp. Chrome, Edge and Safari all work, and the camera image is processed inside the browser and never uploaded or stored; there is no server that could receive it.

Built for kids from 4 to 14, with four ranks per game: Rookie is very forgiving, Master will tire a fourteen-year-old properly. Points are never taken away and two kids play side by side sharing one score — each on their own rank — so siblings cooped up together burn the energy off as a team instead of as rivals. Free, all 35 games, nothing to buy — the Moon Temple unlocks itself after twenty games have a best score.