FACE MAKER

FACE MAKER is a playful game app that lets anyone mix and match parts to craft 46,000 + unique, funny faces.

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Inspiration

This is my first hackathon—and my first online event outside my own country. While searching for a game that anyone could enjoy, regardless of borders, I watched a series of Bolt.new tutorials on YouTube. One video showed Gomoku being built from a single prompt. Curious, I tried the same with Othello and, to my surprise, it worked in one prompt, too. That’s when I wondered whether FUKUWARAI could appear just as easily. Even after several prompts, however, the game never came out quite right.

Rather than give up, I decided to build a FUKUWARAI game myself in Bolt.new.

I chose FUKUWARAI because it’s truly borderless—anyone can enjoy arranging a funny face. Plus, its playful spirit made it the perfect canvas for the bright, pop-style UI I wanted to create. I’m not an engineer—I work in the real-estate industry. Because I’d never written a single line of code, I wanted to tackle a project I could truly enjoy building myself.

What it does

Overview FACE MAKER is a desktop browser game. Choose a face outline, drag-and-drop facial features, and craft a unique face.

Use cases Great for sharing laughs with family or friends, breaking the ice in gatherings, or even creating a fun social-media avatar.

How we built it

Frameworks & libraries Next.js, React, dnd-kit, and more.

Deployment Hosted on Netlify.

Development workflow Generate starter code with Bolt.new prompts → push to GitHub → upload the outline and facial-part images to the repo → fix errors in editors like Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex → return to Bolt.new for further development, refining the UI and fine-tuning features.

Challenges I ran into

Syncing the play screen with the final reveal The face outline sits in a different position on the play screen than on the finished screen, so parts appeared misaligned. We solved this by saving each part’s position and scale relative to the outline canvas instead of absolute coordinates.

Vanishing images Some assets refused to load. After several failed fix attempts inside Bolt.new, a closer look at GitHub showed the real culprit: the images had never been uploaded correctly. Re-uploading them (not rewriting code) finally cleared the error.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Assembled a rich image library, allowing users to generate 46,000 + unique faces. ・Built an intuitive UI so simple that even children can use it without guidance. ・Released on schedule—despite this being our very first hackathon. ・While relying on AI-assisted “prompt coding,” I consistently asked for code explanations and dug into the mechanics, which lowered our personal barrier to programming.

What I learned

How to join hackathon Mastering Bolt.new — from prompt crafting to deployment. Using “Discuss” to prevent surprises — instead of generating full code at once, we first ask Bolt.new for incremental fixes or additions, aligning expectations and avoiding mismatches. It taught us a key coding workflow. Integrating GitHub — setting up repos, pushing changes, and leveraging pull requests. Working with code-assistant tools like Cursor to spot errors and streamline edits.

Built With

  • bolt.new
  • chatgpt
  • claude
  • cursor
  • english
  • github
  • japanese
  • netlify
  • next.js
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