I agree, asking the player to install and run a local server on this computer seems a bit odd for a game jam project. I think you can achieve it with cookie in a pretty simple way but I understand that learning all of that plus making a game is a bit too much to handle for a game jam ;)
It works pretty well actually, I was at first pretty surprised by the concept and how it will works. But I think with a little "developer magic" this prototype can really be an interesting project.