quantum-purble-pairs

A nostalgic, skeuomorphic recreation of the classic Windows 7 Purble Pairs memory game, injected with a real-time quantum entanglement layer driven by the Moth Quantum ecosystem.

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Quantum Purble Pairs

A memory-matching game styled after the Windows 7 Purble Pairs, with a quantum twist. Built for Moth Hack - London 2026 (Challenge 05, Quantum game).

Play it live: https://quantum-purble-pairs.vercel.app

Title screen

Gameplay

What it is

Flip tiles, find matching pairs, and clear the board before the clock runs out. The look is a close recreation of the classic Windows 7 game: the Aero window, the glossy purple board, the green clover tile backs, the chalkboard scoreboard, the glass jar and the checkered floor.

On top of the classic game there is a quantum "peek" mechanic. Some tiles are entangled pairs. Clicking one of them reveals both for a moment, along with a measured two-qubit state such as 01. The state shown on each peek comes from a run on the Moth Atlas graph-v1 engine.

Features

  • Three board sizes: 6x6 (Beginner), 8x8 (Intermediate), 10x10 (Advanced)
  • Eight token types: heart, clover, smile, gumdrop, star, shield, diamond, cross
  • A fresh random layout every game, always winnable
  • Countdown timer per level: 2:30 on 6x6, 4:00 on 8x8, 7:00 on 10x10
  • A blue tube that drains with the clock and turns red in the last 15 seconds
  • Three lamps by the jar: red at the start, yellow at half the pairs, green when you clear the board
  • Matched tokens fly into the glass jar
  • Click a third tile after a wrong guess and the two wrong tiles flip back at once
  • Windows 7 style menus and dialogs: Options, Statistics, How to Play and About
  • Sound effects played with the Web Audio API
  • Keyboard shortcuts: F1 help, F2 new game, F5 options, F7 statistics

How the quantum part works

Everything quantum in this project is emulated. No QPU hardware is used.

  • Peek result: the state shown when you click an entangled tile comes from a saved Moth Atlas graph-v1 emulator run, stored in atlas-topology.json.
  • Circuit-drawn randomness: Hadamard gates put qubits in superposition, and a Born-rule measurement gives a number used for shuffling and picking pairs. This runs in a small state-vector simulation in the browser.
  • Reversible match check: two 3-qubit symbol registers go through CNOT gates and read 000 when the symbols are equal. The result is checked against a plain comparison.
  • Fallback: if the Atlas file can't load, a local Bell-state simulation (Hadamard plus CNOT) takes over, and the game badge says so.

The Moth Atlas run

  • Engine: graph-v1 (emulation)
  • Job: 16 qubits, 1024 shots, seed 2026, a coupling map of 8 pairs
  • Job ID: 440d603d-73d7-4510-bde1-f301606df661
  • The run was made from a notebook, and the returned measurements were converted into atlas-topology.json (156 shots).
  • The game never calls the Atlas API from the browser, so no API key is in this repository.

Honest limits

  • The Atlas data is a saved run, not live engine output.
  • The API returned only the top 20 outcomes, so the data is skewed and some pairs mostly read 11. It is a random graph state, not a perfect Bell pair.
  • The match rules and scoring are ordinary game code. The quantum parts supply randomness and the peek result.
  • Randomness is circuit-sampled, not true quantum randomness.

Run it locally

You need Node.js.

git clone https://github.com/Athleity/quantum-purble-pairs.git
cd quantum-purble-pairs
npm install --legacy-peer-deps
npm run dev

Then open the address Vite prints, usually http://localhost:5173.

To build for production:

npm run build

The --legacy-peer-deps flag is needed because of a version conflict between Vite 8 and one of its plugins. The same flag is set as the install command on Vercel.

Project structure

  • index.html - page structure, window and dialogs
  • style.css - the Windows 7 look
  • game.js - game logic and quantum simulation
  • atlas-topology.json - saved Moth Atlas graph-v1 measurements
  • public/sounds.js - embedded sound effects
  • public/ - files served as-is by Vite
  • sounds/ - original audio files
  • src/ - Vite app entry

Built with

  • HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript on Vite
  • Moth Atlas graph-v1 engine (emulation)
  • Web Audio API for sound
  • Deployed on Vercel

Credits

  • Original game: Purble Place by Microsoft. This is an unofficial fan recreation made for a hackathon, with no Microsoft code or assets.
  • Sound effects: Kenney Interface Sounds (CC0).
  • Quantum engine: Moth Quantum

AI disclosure

Parts of the code, the interface and this README were written with help from generative AI tools: Google AI Studio (Gemini) and Claude. I reviewed, tested and edited the result.

Author

Quantha (individual entry) - GitHub: @Athleity

Made for Moth Hack - London 2026.

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