PDF Hangman - A Gamified studying experience

PDF Hangman turns study notes into fun, animated Hangman games using AI. Just upload a PDF—no login needed. Learn key terms through play, one puzzle at a time!

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Inspiration

I am a lecturer in a vocational school in Singapore. Many of my students are kinesthetic learners who struggle with retaining textbook definitions and academic terms. Traditional revision methods don’t always work for them. I asked myself: Can I turn textbook learning into something more tactile and playful—something they actually enjoy doing? That’s how PDF Hangman was born—a way to turn study notes into an interactive, gamified experience.

What it does

PDF Hangman allows students to upload PDF notes and converts them into an animated Hangman game. Using Gemini AI, it extracts important academic terms and generates:

  • A question for each term
  • A hint to guide the player
  • A difficulty level (Easy, Medium, Hard)

Players choose a difficulty and play through a series of terms presented as Hangman puzzles—with engaging visuals, smooth animations, and no login required. It's studying, reimagined as a game.

How we built it

  • Frontend: Built using Bolt.new with modern web tools like Vite and JavaScript for fluid UI and animations.
  • Backend: Utilized pdf-distill to extract raw text from uploaded PDF files.
  • AI Integration: Integrated Gemini Pro API to extract terms, generate quiz-style questions and hints, and categorize them by difficulty.
  • All logic runs seamlessly with no user accounts, using in-memory storage for gameplay.

🧗 Challenges we ran into

  • The AI-related libraries had incompatible versions, especially with pdf-distill, which caused runtime errors. We resolved this by carefully reviewing and updating dependencies based on official documentation.
  • The AI-generated quiz questions were initially repetitive or too similar. We refined the Gemini prompt to request more diverse terms and to avoid repeating question formats.
  • Getting accurate text extraction from various PDF formats (especially scanned or poorly structured files) remained a challenge.
  • Creating a responsive, animated UI that works well across different devices while remaining lightweight and performant

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Developed a working end-to-end pipeline from PDF → AI → Game
  • Made the app completely account-free and browser-based, perfect for classroom or casual use
  • Received positive feedback from students during early tests—they actually wanted to study more!
  • Showcased how generative AI can personalize education in a meaningful way

What we learned

  • Kinesthetic learners engage better when learning is interactive and visual
  • Prompt engineering is critical to get quality outputs from large language models like Gemini
  • Simple games with clear educational goals can outperform traditional quizzes in retention
  • There’s a huge potential in blending AI, education, and gamification

What's next for PDF Hangman – A Gamified Studying Experience

  • Add support for DOCX and PPTX files
  • Introduce themes for a more immersive experience
  • Include score tracking during session with leaderboards to encourage classroom competition
  • Explore voice input for accessibility and learning reinforcement
  • Launch a public beta for educators to test in real classrooms

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