SproutBound

Login Page
Home Page
Study Page
Our Tamagotchi

Inspiration: What inspired us was the old Japanese toy Tamagotchi that requires players to feed, entertain, and care for a virtual creature to help it successfully evolve through various life stages. Building upon this, we wanted to create an app that would encourage users to study and, hopefully, make it fun by taking care of something shared with friends.

What it does: SproutBound incentivizes users to study with friends by earning nutrients for a shared tree that evolves through three stages as they reach specific milestones. By leveraging Google's Gemini AI, users can generate personalized study sets on virtually any topic they want to learn. Their study efforts are rewarded with coins that can be spent on room customization, as well as nutrients that contribute to the growth of their shared tree.

How we built it: We built SproutBound as a web application using Next.js, React, TypeScript, HTML, and CSS, combining a cozy, pixel-art-inspired interface with interactive game mechanics to make studying more engaging. Our team of four collaborated using Git and GitHub, working on separate feature branches to develop different components simultaneously. We used OpenAI Codex to assist with development, debugging, and integrating features.

Challenges we ran into: One of our biggest challenges was integrating the backend during the final stages of development. While we made significant progress on the frontend, implementing multiplayer functionality proved more difficult than anticipated. Getting users to interact within a shared environment presented several technical obstacles, and with limited time remaining, we had to prioritize refining the core experience over implementing every feature we originally envisioned.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: We're proud of how much of SproutBound we were able to bring to life in such a short amount of time. What started as an idea to make studying more enjoyable turned into a web application with its own identity and interactive features. We're especially proud of the visual design and how we were able to combine AI-powered studying with game mechanics that encourage users to keep learning.

What we learned: Throughout this project, we learned a lot about collaborating as a team and integrating different components into one application. Working on separate branches allowed us to make progress simultaneously, but also taught us the importance of communication when bringing everything together. Our difficulties with the backend also showed us how important it is to establish a working foundation early in development, rather than leaving major integrations until the end.

What's next for SproutBound: Our next priority is to finish implementing the backend and get the multiplayer experience fully functional. We want users to be able to study alongside their friends and contribute to the growth of their shared tree in real time. Beyond that, we hope to expand the customization options and further develop the progression system to give users more reasons to return to SproutBound as they build consistent study habits.