Gravity Four

Like regular connect four but with the twist that you can rotate the board. Runs on iOS and web, single&multiplayer.

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Inspiration

This game was inspired by the classical game of connect four, in which one inserts disks into a vertical board to try to get four in a row. As big fans of the game, our team sought to improve it by adding new features.

What it does

The game is played like a regular game of connect four, except each player may choose to use their turn to rotate the board left or right and let gravity force the pieces to fall downwards. This seemingly innocent change to connect four adds many new layers of strategy and fun to what was already a strategic and fun game.

We developed two products: an iOS app, and a web app, to run the game. In addition, both the iOS and web apps feature the abilities of: 1) Play local "pass and play" multiplayer 2) Play against multiple different AIs we crafted, each of differing skill levels 3) Play live online games against random opponents, including those on different devices!

How we built it

The iOS app was built in Swift and the web app was written with Javascript's canvas. The bulk of the backend, which is crucial for both our online multiplayer and our AIs, came from Firebase's services.

Challenges we ran into

None of us are particularly artistic, so getting a visually pleasant UI wasn't exactly easy...

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of our ability to successfully run an online cross-platform multiplayer, which we could not have possibly done without the help of Firebase and its servers and APIs. We are also proud of the AIs we developed, which so far tend to beat us almost every time.

What we learned

Most of us had very little experience working with backend servers, so Firebase provided us with a lovely introduction to allowing our applications to flourish on my butt.

What's next for Gravity Four

Let's get Gravity Four onto even more types of devices and into the app store!

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