CyberTopia

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  Character Select

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  Battle Scene

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  Game Over

Inspiration

We wanted to merge the strategy-based fun of Pokémon, and recently "Pokopia", with the high-tech aesthetic of the JagHacks 2026 theme. By swapping out trainers and monsters for Sentinels and digital "Daemons," we created a nostalgic but fresh arcade experience set entirely within a command-line interface.

What it does

CyberTopia is an endless, arcade-style battle simulator with a retro-hacker aesthetic. Players establish an uplink and deploy "Daemon Protocols" (like GLITCH_CAT, CYBER_HOUND, or NEON_TOAD) to fend off relentless waves of SENTINEL.sys enemy programs. The game features a persistent leveling system, dynamic visual feedback through a custom 'Glitch Engine' (utilizing screen shake and sine-wave bobbing), and an endless progression loop that challenges players to secure the highest streak possible.

How we built it

The core engine is built in Python using the Pygame library for rendering, state management, and event handling. We used Google Gemini as an AI pair programmer to help generate the foundational logic, ensuring the codebase remained readable and logically structured. To handle state persistence, we implemented local JSON file handling, allowing the game to save player progress, experience points, and track the global high score across different sessions.

Challenges we ran into

Our main hurdle was feature scoping and managing complexity. It was tempting to add endless mechanics, but we had to carefully decide which functions to incorporate without complicating the beginner-friendly architecture. Maintaining a clean user flow and managing the technical transition between the selection screen and the active battle state required precise logic tuning.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of going from intending to just observe the hackathon to actually submitting a fully functional 2d Python game! Working alongside AI to build a project from nothing, successfully implementing persistent data storage, and ensuring a seamless, bug-free user experience was a huge win.

What we learned

We gained hands-on experience with game loop architecture, learning to manage frame rates, screen updates, and user input simultaneously. Beyond just understanding basic Python syntax, we learned how to architect a complete state-based application and use external data structures (JSON) to track and save high-score accomplishments outside of the script's runtime memory.

What's next for CyberTopia

We plan to continue designing and building new Daemon Protocols to expand the game's roster and add unique designs for each Daemon, giving players more strategic and creative freedom. We also plan to introduce new enemy classes to make the endless survival loop increasingly challenging and dynamic.

Built With

• ai
• canva
• gemini
• json
• notebook++
• pygame
• python
• visual-studio