Fumble Words

Inspiration

I love word games and was inspired by the possibility of a multiplayer version of other word games i have seen. The idea was to bring people together for quick, fun challenges—no setup needed.

What it does

It’s a web app word guessing game but with different modes and can be any one of 12,000 target words to guess. You can play solo, a daily puzzle, or compete live with friends. Mutli-player is the coolest part of the app. Everything runs in your browser.

How we built it

This application was built with Bolt.new, and is a real-time multiplayer word-guessing game built with a modern web stack, leveraging React and TypeScript for a dynamic frontend, styled with Tailwind CSS and animated by Framer Motion. Its robust backend is powered by Firebase, utilizing Authentication for user management, the Realtime Database for live game state synchronization, Firestore for daily challenge data and user statistics, and Cloud Functions for server-side logic like daily word generation and game cleanup. The core game mechanics are implemented in utility functions, and the entire application is deployed and hosted via Netlify.

Challenges we ran into

Some complexity around using Realtime DB in Firebase. Multiplayer and user account management was the most interesting. Was hitting race conditions when integrating with firebase for multiplayer. UI updates about player progress has to be relayeed to all players in the match onto the multiplayer panel. I managed to prompt my way through it with help from discord discussions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Implementing the multiplayer feature with Firebase. Required alot of analysis and review to prompt Bolt in to building out robust functionality.

What we learned

I had to learn how to use a couple of prompting approaches to make Bolt look at issues in specific ways to fix certain issues and not break other parts of the app as it worked away on various features that have dependencies on other features. Participating in the discord forum also helped quite a bit. So, lean on those communities to help you leap over those obstacles.

What's next for Fumble Words

Expanding the game so it's appealing to schools, like 4-letter word games, some badges and class competitions that can be managed by class room teachers that can drive literacy goals. Looking at a "Fumble Royale" mode, where you can just join a multiplayer game without needing to host, or get an invite. Frankly, I hadn't even considered these ideas until I could breathe life in to the game with Bolt. It will be hard to choose what to do first!

Built With

• firebase
• firestore
• google-cloud
• netlify
• react
• tailwindcss
• typescript