Inspiration
As the world around us gets more stressful, we wanted to create something that gives people a fun, playful outlet from the stress of life and work. Instead of forcing breaks through strict timers or guilt, we wanted breaks to feel rewarding, using short games to refresh the mind.
What it does
This project is a Chrome extension designed to provide short, engaging gaming breaks at user-defined time intervals. The extension allows users to select specific intervals during which a pop-up window appears, offering quick access to a variety of classic and casual games. By integrating gameplay into scheduled breaks, the extension encourages relaxation and mental refreshment without disrupting productivity. The extension features a collection of popular games, including Flappy Bird, Snake, Tetris, and 2048. Some games also include two-player modes, allowing users to play competitively or cooperatively with friends on the same device. The games are lightweight, easy to start, and optimized for short play sessions. With customizable timing, an intuitive interface, and a diverse set of games, this Chrome extension blends entertainment with time management, making it ideal for users who want fun, controlled breaks during work or study sessions.
How we built it
We used HTML, CSS and Javascript as well as chrome extensions.
Challenges we ran into
One of the main challenges we faced during this project was implementing game logic that involved generating random Tetris tiles, as well as handling the multi-player interactions in the Snake game. To overcome these difficulties, we enlisted the help of AI to guide us through the underlying concepts, such as storing all possible Tetris tiles in a data structure and selecting a tile using a random number generator. This approach is scalable, as new Tetris tiles can be added without changing the core logic of the code.
For the multi-player Snake game, the challenge lay in managing interactions between two players within the same game state. This required checking for collisions with walls, the player’s own body, and the other player’s snake during each update cycle. Through this process, we gained a better understanding of game state management and collision detection, which helped us implement a more robust and responsive multi-player experience.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are the most proud of overcoming the technical challenges related to the different games in our extension. We worked effectively as a team to troubleshoot issues collaboratively and used AI as a learning tool to deepen our understanding on concepts during our developmental stage.
What we learned
This project was the first time we created a chrome extension. We used the React framework to build the user interface and learned how to implement timed events to trigger the extension pop-up at selected time intervals using chrome.alarms. This experience expanded our technical skill set and gave us valuable exposure to developing browser-based applications.
What's next for Breakie!
In the future, Breakie could implement customisable user accounts to enhance personalisation. With user accounts, players can save their progress and track individual performance across different games. The introduction of leaderboards will allow players to compare high scores globally and among their friends to foster further engagement. As Breakie improves, it should incorporate more and more games such as racing games, mix and match games to cater to younger children.
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