Defuse

Controller!
What happens when it explodes...
Side view controller!

Inspiration

Looking back on our childhood each member of our team had great memories of playing board games and watching mission impossible with family members and friends. We wanted to recreate some of that excitement and build a fun, high tension game that 2 people could play together. With the game Operation, where players take careful steps under pressure to fix a delicate problem, being a big inspiration for us we set out to build a co-op game with that same type of tension. That idea became Defuse, a game where one player handles a bomb while their teammate guides them through disarming it.

What it does

Defuse is a co-op bomb simulator game. One player holds the FREE-WILi, which acts as the bomb, a second player sits at a computer screen away from the bomb and reads the encoded instructions. The second player decodes those instructions and tells the first player how to deactivate the bomb before time runs out.

How we built it

FREE-WILi hardware: accelerometer, buttons, LEDs, display, speaker, IR
Python state-machine engine, hardware-decoupled, virtual bomb mode
FastAPI + WebSockets, real-time browser sync
6 sensor puzzles, randomized, serial-seeded solutions
Claude + ElevenLabs dynamic voice, pre-generated fallback
Layered hardware/software architecture

Challenges we ran into

Originally targeted sustainability track, but idea fell through due to hardware aspect of the project not being feasible under hackathon constraints. Once we pivoted to target the hardware track and hashed out our idea, it was difficult to code and model the bomb diffusing, as well as connect it to be properly prompted by the encoded instructions on the secondary device.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Being able to produce a fully functioning game on a device we just became familiar with (free willi) Creating a co-op game that successfully blends the use of a computer and a free willi Used multiple coding languages to make the game Ability to pair hardware with a software back end to make a game Being able to implement multiple companies are products presented at hackathon to make our game successful (free willi, 11 labs)