Downtime: Escape the phone
A retro maze game about phone addiction: reach the goal while dodging the notifications that drain your willpower.
Official site downtime.partridge.works, verified Nov 3, 2026. Hosted on a subdomain of the developer's own site, partridge.works; the game's About page credits Carl Partridge and links partridge.works.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleasedFree
Runs in a desktop or mobile browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Downtime: Escape the phone
A free retro-styled browser game made to raise awareness of phone addiction. In each level you walk to the goal while avoiding harmful phone notifications that sap your willpower; a notifications pane shows what is coming, and walking over a wifi router mutes one of the phones. It plays with the arrow keys or WASD on a computer, and with on-screen arrows or a drag joystick on a phone. Levels come in groups, and there is a level editor. The game's About page credits Carl Partridge and argues that social media companies should stop profiting from children's attention. In a Show HN post, the poster says the game began as a prototype for a nonprofit and turned out addictive, and presents it as an example of what a senior developer could do with Opus 4.7 in two days of collaborative prompting.
How it was built
Partially verifiedIn the Show HN post the poster says the game was prototyped by “a senior dev working with Opus 4.7 over 2 days” using “genuinely collaborative prompting”, described as plan, feedback, iterate. The post names the model, not the product (chat, API or Claude Code), and does not say how much of the code the model wrote.
- DeveloperShow HN post (11 May 2026) by urbandw311er, linking the game: “I'm sharing this here mainly to serve as an indicator of what can be achieved early-2026 by a senior dev working with Opus 4.7 over 2 days using genuinely collaborative prompting.” — Hacker News (urbandw311er)
A two-day prototype by an experienced developer working with Claude Opus 4.7 in a plan, feedback and iterate loop, per the Show HN post. The site is a single-page JavaScript app with routes for play, a level-group editor and a sign-in page. The poster offered to open-source it if there was demand; no repository is linked.
- Engine / framework
- Not disclosed (single-page JavaScript web app)
- Languages
- JavaScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- About 2 days (prototype)Developer ReportedHacker News (urbandw311er)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“I'm sharing this here mainly to serve as an indicator of what can be achieved early-2026 by a senior dev working with Opus 4.7 over 2 days using genuinely collaborative prompting.”Verification notes: AI use and the two-day timeline from the Show HN post of 11 May 2026 by the Hacker News user urbandw311er, which links the game. Rules and controls from the game's How to Play screen and credits from its About page (both read from the site's script files, since the pages render with JavaScript); the level editor from the site's routes and the post. Developer details from partridge.works. The Hacker News profile is blank, so the link between that account and Carl Partridge rests on a domain match: the post links a game on the partridge.works domain, and the game's About page credits Carl Partridge. The post says the game began as a prototype for a nonprofit but does not name it; partridge.works lists work for Smartphone Free Childhood, but nothing ties that organisation to this game, so no client is recorded. The number of levels was not checked. Team size is not stated; the post speaks of one senior developer, but that is not recorded as a team size. The post had 5 points and 3 comments on 3 Nov 2026 (observed; not a metric). No release date is stated; the game was public by the Show HN date.
Development history
Posted to Hacker News as a Show HN, presented as a two-day prototype built with Opus 4.7.
DeveloperHacker News (urbandw311er)
Game performance
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Browser (official site)
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Not publicly available: Concurrent players (site), Monthly revenue, Gross revenue.
Sales & revenue (all platforms)
Browser game — there are no downloads to count.
Reviews & rankings
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Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show HN: An addictive phone game about phone addiction Hacker News (urbandw311er) | Social post | May 11, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Downtime: Escape the phone Carl Partridge | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| About — Downtime Carl Partridge | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| How to Play — Downtime Carl Partridge | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| partridge.works Carl Partridge | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) Carl Partridge | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
