Traffiq: Car Escape Puzzle

Escape the gridlock! Slide vehicles and master 10,000+ fast, fluid, and handcrafted traffic puzzle stages.

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Inspiration

Traffic gridlocks are universally frustrating in real life, but navigating complex spatial puzzles is deeply satisfying. We wanted to build a native, modern, and buttery-smooth brain puzzle game with zero intrusive clutter. Our goal was to create a game that feels tactile, rewarding, and accessible anytime—whether you have 30 seconds on a commute or 30 minutes to unwind.

What it does

Traffiq: Car Escape Puzzle is an Android puzzle game where players slide blocking vehicles along lanes to navigate the main sports car to freedom.

  • 10,000+ Handcrafted Puzzles: Progresses smoothly from quick beginner streets to mind-bending grandmaster highways.
  • Daily Challenges & Streaks: Daily puzzle drops with bonus coins and streak tracking.
  • Custom Vehicle Garage & Themes: Earn coins to collect and customize cars (sports cars, cybertrucks, retro beetles) and board styles.
  • Competitive Championships & Leaderboard: Global rankings and 14 milestone achievements.
  • 100% Offline & Instant Load: Fully playable without internet, storing states and move counts instantaneously.

How we built it

Traffiq is built natively from scratch on Android using a modern, reactive stack:

  • Kotlin & Jetpack Compose + Material 3: Declarative UI with butter-smooth micro-animations, custom drag gestures, and dynamic dark theme design.
  • Koin: Lightweight, clean Dependency Injection.
  • Room Database & Jetpack DataStore: High-speed offline persistence for board states, star ratings, move counts, and player unlocks.
  • Google Cloud Firestore: Cloud syncing for global leaderboard standings and championship ranks.
  • Supabase Integration: Profile management and guest-to-cloud session handling.
  • RevenueCat: In-app purchase management for subscriptions and premium unlocks.

Challenges we ran into

  • Fluid Gesture Handling on Tight Grids: Tuning pointer input drag physics so vehicles slide smoothly along their axis without clipping or jitter across diverse screen sizes.
  • Generating & Packing 10,000+ Balanced Levels: Structuring and compressing thousands of valid, solvable puzzle boards without bloating APK size or load times.
  • Seamless Offline-First Sync: Ensuring all achievements, coins, and level states persist offline instantly and sync effortlessly when internet connectivity returns.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Achieved 60+ FPS fluid animations and instant touch responsiveness on budget to flagship Android devices.
  • Shipped a complete, production-ready app with 10,000+ levels, daily challenge mechanics, and a full customization store.
  • Successfully published to Google Play Store with full edge-to-edge support and Material 3 polish.

What we learned

  • Advanced gesture detection and coordinate mapping in Jetpack Compose.
  • Performance optimization strategies for rendering dynamic grid layouts and vehicle physics with zero frame drops.
  • Best practices for combining offline-first local Room storage with real-time cloud leaderboards.

What's next for Traffiq: Car Escape Puzzle

  • Community Level Editor: Allow players to design their own gridlock puzzles and challenge friends.
  • Real-time 1v1 Rush Mode: Head-to-head live puzzle racing to see who can escape the grid faster.
  • More Vehicle Classes & Audio Soundscapes: Adding emergency vehicles (ambulances, fire engines) with unique mechanics and ambient city audio.

Built With

  • android
  • datastore
  • google-cloud-firestore
  • gradle
  • jetpack-compose
  • koin
  • kotlin
  • material3
  • revenuecat
  • room-db
  • supabase
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