Alexa Party Game

The possibles outcomes in the game

Inspiration

Alexa is good at giving randomized responses in a simple and fun way. What a better way to use this technology to implement a party game.

What it does

It gives commands to a group of players who have a deck of cards with them and players follow these commands to have fun together. It's sort of a modified version of the game "Kings".

How we built it

We build the entire project using AWS Lambda and Node.Js

Challenges we ran into

We initially tried to make an RPG adventure game that was based on communicating with Alexa. However, we had to make templates for every possible response for the technology to understand the user input reliably. Since we couldn't find a timely solution to the said problem we had to abandon complex user input and pivot to an entirely new project in a real hackathon fashion.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have completed a project that is small, simple and executable in a small market that it could shine.

What we learned

Alexa is a relatively new technology with numerous missing functions. We need to wait for Amazon to improve its UI for developers an get out of beta to be able to really push the technology to its limits and make better services/applications for everyone to use. We spent too much time trying to invent new ways to do things that were flat-out impossible with the current tools and API.

What's next for Alexa Party Game

Add more rules to the game to make it more interesting and eventually add more games to the Party Game module on Alexa so players can have an assortment of games to choose from.