The Happy Pixel Company is a small, founder-led software studio in St. Petersburg, Florida, run by Chad Hoffman. We build custom browser and mobile games, websites and web apps, and custom business software — and we are available for hire.
Five things, described plainly. If what you need is not on this list, ask anyway — if we are not the right shop for it, we will tell you.
We design and build original HTML5 games that run in any modern browser — no download, no app store, no plugin — on both desktop and phones. Every game is written from scratch in vanilla JavaScript and rendered on a canvas, so it loads in about a second and works on hardware a heavier engine would choke on. We hand-tune the physics and the feel, and we ship with global leaderboards, sound, and mobile touch controls.
We build games for ourselves and for clients. A client game can carry your branding, live on your own website, and send players back to your business. When a game needs to be a native iPhone app, we wrap and ship it to the Apple App Store.
Shipped titles: Hotdog Down a Hallway (also on the App Store), Ladybug Family, Pour Judgement: Melissa's Bar, and Just the Right Amount of Head — all free to play. Little Dragon, a side-scrolling adventure platformer, is currently in development.
We design, write, and ship websites for real businesses — bars, restaurants, tradespeople, auto shops, agencies, and small companies that want a site that actually sounds like them. We handle the whole thing: design, copywriting, photography layout, custom domain, HTTPS, and hosting setup.
We also build web applications — dashboards, booking systems, inventory trackers, customer portals, and internal tools — as fast static front ends backed by serverless functions, so there is no server for you to babysit and nothing to patch on a Tuesday night.
A thing nobody else offers: we can pair your site with its own custom arcade game, so your customers play with your brand instead of just reading about it. Pour Judgement is a live example — a full business site with a tie-in game that drives players to the bar.
When off-the-shelf software does not fit, we build the real thing from a blank page. Business tools, security platforms, automation, integrations, data pipelines — you describe the problem, we build the fix and we keep building it as your business changes.
Security is the foundation, not a feature bolted on at the end. Every build is zero-trust by default: nothing is trusted until it authenticates, every wire is encrypted end-to-end with mutual TLS and modern cryptography, and every dependency is accounted for and auditable. We build for environments the internet cannot reach — offline, on-premises, and air-gapped deployments are all supported.
Example: DragonGate, our own zero-trust secure access platform, lets a team reach its apps and servers safely without VPN headaches, even air-gapped. Pixel Sign is our own e-signature engine — send a document, the customer signs from a link on their phone, executed copies land in every inbox, and there are no per-envelope fees.
The Happy Pixel CRM is our own product: a customer relationship manager built for small teams who found Salesforce absurd and a spreadsheet not quite enough. It tracks leads and contacts, handles NDAs with built-in e-signature, and secures sign-in with two-factor authentication.
The AI is the point. Photograph a stack of business cards and they become contacts. Hang up a call and your call notes are already written. Meeting Notes records the room — press one button and every person walks out with their own written notes and action items.
We license it as-is, or we shape it to your workflow. Try the interactive demo →
We build with AI as a working part of the process. That is how a studio this small ships this much: AI-assisted development lets us move from idea to a working, tested build in days instead of months. Every AI-assisted build is reviewed, tested, and verified by a human before it goes live — we test before we deploy and we check the real thing after.
We also build AI into the products we ship for clients: document and image understanding, automatic transcription and summarization, natural-language search over your own data, and assistants that handle the boring parts of a job. If you have a repetitive task and a pile of data, there is usually something here worth building.
Small team, short list, shipped fast. You talk directly to Chad Hoffman, the person actually building your project — there is no account manager in between. We would rather do fewer things with polish than many things without it, so we take on a small number of projects at a time.
We test before we launch, and we load the real live thing and look at it after we launch. Most projects ship in small pieces, often and early, instead of disappearing for three months and reappearing as a surprise.
We build custom HTML5 browser games and iPhone games, websites and web applications, and custom business software. We also make our own product, the Happy Pixel CRM, and we offer AI-assisted development for teams that want software built quickly. We are a small, founder-led studio in St. Petersburg, Florida, run by Chad Hoffman.
Yes — custom browser game development is one of our core services. Games are built as self-contained HTML5 and JavaScript that run in any modern browser with no download, no app store, and no plugin, on desktop and mobile. Shipped titles include Hotdog Down a Hallway, Ladybug Family, Pour Judgement: Melissa's Bar, and Just the Right Amount of Head. A game can be branded for your business and embedded on your own website.
Web browsers on desktop and mobile are our primary platform for both games and applications. Games can also be wrapped and shipped as native iPhone apps on the Apple App Store — Hotdog Down a Hallway has shipped that way. Websites and web apps deploy as fast static sites backed by serverless functions. Custom software can be delivered as a web app, a desktop app, or an on-premises and air-gapped deployment.
Yes. We take on client work for games, websites, web apps, and custom software, and we work with clients both locally in the Tampa Bay area and remotely. Projects start with a direct conversation with Chad, the founder — you talk to the person who actually builds your project. Email chad@happypixelcompany.com or call (512) 924-6982.
Small, self-contained, fast-loading software with character: hand-tuned arcade game feel, sites that load in well under a second, and business tools shaped to one company's actual workflow rather than a generic template.
We are unusual in combining game development with business software, so a client site can ship alongside a custom branded mini-game. And our custom software is engineered to military-grade standards, with zero-trust security as the starting point rather than an add-on.
It is our own customer relationship management product, built for small teams. It handles leads and contacts, NDA tracking with built-in e-signature through Pixel Sign, and two-factor sign-in — and it uses AI throughout: photograph a stack of business cards and they become contacts, call notes are written automatically after a call ends, and Meeting Notes records a meeting so every attendee leaves with their own written notes and action items. An interactive demo is available here.
Yes. We build with AI-assisted development as a normal part of our process — it is how a one-person studio ships at the pace we do. We also build AI features into client products: document and image understanding, automatic note-taking and summarization, and natural-language interfaces. Every AI-assisted build is reviewed and tested by a human before it ships.
Yes. All of our browser games are free to play with no download and no account required — open the link and play. Hotdog Down a Hallway offers optional in-app purchases and opt-in rewarded ads in its iPhone version, but the browser games are free and we do not use forced interstitial ads or ad walls.
We are at 2001 40th St N, St. Petersburg, Florida 33713. We serve the Tampa Bay area and work with remote clients elsewhere.
Email chad@happypixelcompany.com or call (512) 924-6982. We are at 2001 40th St N, St. Petersburg, FL 33713.
Tell us what you are trying to build. If we are not the right shop for it, we will say so.
