LiquidBlast - Fun touch on tic tac toe

Inspiration

During our discussion we realised that most games we loved had multi-player and some connection with it. We regularly play Fifa, Asphalt and clash Royale depending on mood. We wanted to build something Easier, Complete and should be Fun. Result was our childhood game on paper. Tic Tac Toe with a twist. We call it a LiquidBlast.

What it does

It is turn based 2 player game. Play offline or online together with your friend. Here is how it works -

• There is 3*3 big grid and each cell has 3*3 mini grid.
• Each player takes turn and mark on mini grid.
• Based on first player, second player can only mark on certain place.
• Thus, you're playing 9 tic-tac-toe at a time
• The player who make highest 3 in a row lines, win!

How we built it

• Even for simpler game like this, we worked hard on design. With limited knowledge of figma and sketch we built our Asset.
• Code was written in java and android. We wanted to add realtime functionality to play from anywhere. it added a lots of complexity, state management that required rewriting some of that code
• To play with Bot, lots of articles suggested min-max and different approaches. We used our experience to assign points to different scenarios and action. We also added some randomness and thus, making it super fun. [Most people think, it's AI or some magic]

Challenges we ran into

• We followed a tutorial to build online tic-tac-toe and even with few changes, it turned out lot harder to build something unique from skills we acquired. Bugs- Bugs- Bugs everywhere.
• Small changes like fixing sound, reset scenarios, putting user to Home Screen, image vs svg, how to do what, managing realtime events, etc.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Build a game that's portfolio worthy
• We enjoyed a lot playing it together while building this remotely. We even thought of some cool modes like we have in clash Royale party mode. We could remove some cells randomly, or a time based version. Or version where more than 2 player could play.
• People loved design and music [it took hours to find open source music that match the vibe and add sound for each action]

What we learned

• Apart from technology factor - there's a lot that goes inside a game that most app developers don't realise. Working on this game made that thing very clear.

What's next for Boxfight - Multiplayer game

• Notification would allow players to join game instantly.
• Different modes [Time, 2+ Players, Invisible tiles]
• Explore gamification techniques
• Leaderboard, IAP and different aspects of app in general

Play Game

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MS99D5UNnb38VhqU6k_0MCpFclIDxok5/view?usp=share_link

Built With

• android-studio
• figma
• firebase
• java
• realtime-db
• wifi