Paw & Order

Home screen
Multiplayer (creating room)
Winner (grade + feedback)

Inspiration

Effective communication is a vital skill needed to navigate our personal and professional lives. It is a skill built up over time, starting from childhood. Yet, many children struggle to express their thoughts and articulate their unique perspectives—often held back by shyness or uncertainty. The Paw & Order video game aims to solve this. We've created an interactive, fun, and stress-free environment that helps kids build conversational and debate confidence. Every child has a voice—let’s help them unleash it.

What it does

Designed to be fun and educational, this kid-friendly game occurs in a virtual courthouse. Players enter a debate room, receive a randomly assigned stance, and participate in a short one minute debate round. By presenting their arguments, users refine their reasoning skills, and the winner is determined based on argument strength and quality.

How we built it

React for frontend MongoDB backend Used OpenAI API

Challenges we ran into

Trying to incorporate two users at the same time was the hardest part. We wanted to create a unique multiplayer, Player Versus Player experience to keep a competitive yet engaging experience. It was also a challenge learning how to incorporate MongoDB as well, as this is our first time using it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We impressed ourselves as a team as we embarked on the ideation process. By bouncing ideas off one another, challenging assumptions, and exploring meaningful issues, we uncovered perspectives that helped shape our vision. Through passionate discussions and collaborative problem-solving, we refined our project’s unique features, ensuring they aligned with our goal of creating something that would benefit our community.

What we learned

From our first hackathon we learned that planning and ideation is super important. It is crucial to have a solid foundation to better understand what you are working on. You can definitely take different angles and pivot through the project, but the value of a solid idea is priceless. We really wanted to see this game come to life, and that is what motivated us to keep pushing!

What's next for Paw & Order

The future of Paw & Order involves the following:

An added component of customization, allowing users to create unique avatars.
Incorporating practice with rebuttals.
More accurate and constructive feedback, with more features like keeping track of tone.