Pumpkin Playground

Inspiration

Tired of the relentless pressure of assignments and rigid academic tasks, we wanted to build something purely lighthearted, whimsical, and fun for the Pumpkin Playground hackathon. Pumpkin Playground was born as an interactive sandbox to let students unwind, beat burnout, and enjoy quick, silly games without stress.

What it does

Pumpkin Playground is a responsive web arcade featuring a warm, modern aesthetic and four fully playable mini-games:

Pumpkin Catch: A fast-paced reflex challenge catching pumpkins while dodging falling homework.
Spooky Whack-a-Mole: A 3x3 precision game with popping jack-o'-lanterns and combo multiplier scoring.
Flappy Pumpkin: An obstacle-dodging agility mini-game with floaty physics.
Pumpkin-Man: A retro neon maze-runner chomping energy seeds and evading roaming ghosts. It also features an interactive expanding hero pumpkin, persistent high-score tracking via localStorage, and an Academic Excuse Generator.

How we built it

Built from scratch using HTML5, modern CSS Grid/Flexbox with warm Framer-inspired styling, and Vanilla JavaScript. We utilized the HTML5 Canvas API for fluid 60 FPS gameplay rendering, CSS transform animations for interactive UI elements, and the browser's built-in Web Audio API to procedurally generate retro sound effects without external audio asset bloat.

Challenges we ran into

Fine-tuning the game physics (balancing Flappy Pumpkin's jump velocity and gravity), handling clean collision detection across multiple Canvas loops, and maintaining uniform layout alignment and equalized card heights across all viewports within a tight submission deadline.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully delivering four distinct, polished, and bug-free arcade mini-games with zero heavy dependencies, smooth navigation, high-score persistence, and cohesive visual design.

What we learned

Deepened our practical experience with procedural Canvas game loops, browser Web Audio synthesis, and writing modular state-management systems for multi-game web applications.