Using mobiles as joysticks to control my game running on computer

 I'm enrolling in a class that I need to design a game as term project. Now we create a multi-player game that run on computer. 
 Because we want it to be a party game, players only play on one device (we don't want to make it an online game). The problem is that it's not convenient for 4 players to use the same keyboard at the same time. Also, we can't afford the cost of real sticks. Thus, I want to use mobiles as joysticks to control my game. That is, four players use an app on their phone to play the game. Maybe it will use socket to connect. I don't find an useful information on the net. Has anyone done the same thing?