🐾 Paw Prints Home—Hackathon Project
A cozy, Taiwan-inspired exploration and puzzle experience built for a Devpost hackathon.
Inspiration
We wanted to create an interactive experience that celebrates Taiwan’s natural beauty and unique wildlife. The original idea began as a gentle puzzle game about following paw prints home, guided by native animals. For the hackathon, we reimagined it as an accessible, story-driven web experience where exploration, culture, and emotional storytelling come together.
What It Does
Paw Prints Home is a peaceful puzzle adventure where users follow environmental clues—like paw prints and environmental markers—to navigate from the bustling city to the tranquil mountain ranges of Taiwan.
Players can:
- Travel from urban alleys to lush forests and misty mountain peaks
- Team up with native animals such as the Leopard Cat, Formosan Black Bear, and Formosan Rock Macaques
- Solve intuitive, environment-integrated puzzles
- Unlock fragments of a forgotten memory as each scene reveals a new piece of the story
- Explore hand-painted, picture-book-style illustrations in a calming, wholesome environment
The experience is fully non-violent and designed as a peaceful escape suitable for all ages.
How We Built It
Our team combined web technologies, interactive design, and visual storytelling to bring the world to life.
Key components include:
- A lightweight, browser-friendly puzzle engine
- Scene-based navigation tied to visual cues
- Custom illustrated backgrounds inspired by Taiwan’s geography
- Environment-embedded puzzle logic emphasizing clarity and calmness
How We Used AI
AI tools played a meaningful role in accelerating development and refining the experience:
- AI-assisted writing to polish narrative tone, character descriptions, and memory fragments
- AI-enhanced illustration tools to quickly iterate on early visual concepts before final hand-painted artwork
- AI coding assistants to debug interaction logic, prototype puzzles, and streamline UI development
These tools allowed rapid iteration while keeping all core art and story elements intentionally crafted by the team.
Challenges We Ran Into
- Balancing visual fidelity with performance
- Designing puzzles that feel intuitive yet meaningful
- Telling a gentle story without relying on dialogue or heavy text
What We’re Proud Of
- Creating a relaxing, wholesome project within a hackathon timeframe
- Showcasing Taiwanese wildlife in an engaging and respectful way
- Building a cohesive, emotionally warm experience with minimal complexity
What’s Next
We plan to extend the world, introduce more Taiwanese animals and regions, and experiment with additional interactive story moments. A mobile-friendly version is also on our roadmap.
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