404ExitNotFound

Inspiration

Studying is boring. We wanted to make it less boring.

We've all spent hours staring at Quizlet sets or rereading notes, trying to convince ourselves that we're actually learning something. We started wondering what studying would look like if it were a game you actually wanted to play.

We took inspiration from games like Doki Doki Literature Club, Oregon Trail, and Stardew Valley. Somehow, that turned into the idea of being trapped in a school with a cute robot teacher who slowly loses his mind every time you try to leave. And that's how 404ExitNotFound started.

What it does

404ExitNotFound is a study game where you upload your notes and try to escape a school.

Sounds easy enough, except your teacher is a little too attached to you.

When you upload your notes, Gemini generates multiple-choice questions based on what you're studying. Those questions are worked into the game as you move through different rooms, make decisions, and try to find a way out.

Along the way, you have to manage your health, hunger, thirst, and intellect. Answering questions incorrectly or making bad decisions can get you killed, and you'll have to start over.

The robot teacher starts off friendly and encouraging, but the closer you get to leaving, the more he glitches and the weirder things get.

Basically, we made studying into a slightly concerning survival game.

How we built it

We built the frontend using React and Vite and created our own visual novel-style game with dialogue, choices, different scenes, and survival stats.

For the AI side, we used Google's Gemini API to generate study questions from uploaded notes and PDFs. The questions include four answer choices, a correct answer, and an explanation. We then feed those questions into the game at specific points in the story.

We used Node.js and Express for our backend and Tiger Data PostgreSQL to store users, saved notes, and generated questions. We also integrated Auth0 for login and registration.

For hosting, we used Vultr and connected everything to our own .study domain through GoDaddy Registry.

A lot of our time also went into the visuals. We wanted the game to look cute and welcoming at first, which makes it even funnier when the teacher starts acting increasingly unhinged.

Challenges we ran into

None of us realized just how many moving parts went into making a game until we started building one.

We had people working on the UI, game logic, storyline, database, and AI integration at the same time. Getting all of those pieces to work together was probably one of our biggest challenges.

We also had to figure out how to make the AI-generated questions fit into the game without making it feel like you were just taking a quiz with extra steps.

Our solution was to write the storyline ourselves and have Gemini generate the study questions separately. That way, the game still has an actual plot, but the material changes depending on what the student uploads.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we managed to turn a pretty ridiculous idea into a working game in one weekend.

We went from brainstorming names and drawing a slightly creepy robot teacher to building a full-stack application with AI-generated questions, a database, authentication, and an actual playable storyline.

We also really love how the character and visuals turned out. There's something hilarious about having an adorable little robot threaten your academic future.

What we learned

We learned a lot about connecting different technologies and working on a project where everyone was building something different at the same time.

We also learned that game development is a lot more complicated than we expected, especially when you're trying to balance storytelling, player choices, and actual educational content.

And maybe most importantly, we learned that scope creep is very real when you have four people with way too many ideas and a deadline.