Sticks and Stones

Inspiration

I love word games. This game was inspired by games like Wordle, Words With Friends, and Boggle, with a tower defense aspect thrown in.

What it does

The polished concept would be a game that allows players to play 1v1 and race to come up with as many words as possible and use those words to attack or defend against the other player. In single player mode, the player would race against the clock to clear out all the letters.

How we built it

I used Velo website creation feature, fetch, backend api's, and plug & play components. I also used Phaser (an open source html5 2d game design framework) and planch (a physics engine). I used AWS to host some game assets. I also used a royalty free song (Pixel Pig by Di Young) for theme music.

Challenges we ran into

It was definitely a bumpy road, but I would say the time crunch on my last minute project was what kept me up at night. Literally. I had a clear roadmap of how the game was going to be developed but I would hit coding snags like the graphic components were rendering differently on different sized screens in a way that would impact the gaming experience. Also every aspect of this process was knew to me accept for using s3 buckets on AWS.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The client-side dictionary is impressive to me. As the user types a word, the fact that javascript can search over 400,000 words in fractions of a second and validate the word is mind blowing to me. I love technology.

What we learned

I learned a lot about Velo and hosting files online. I had some issues with CORS errors. I've never done game design before but I'm familiar with the general game lifecycles. The Velo iframe forced me to focus on making a responsive game which adds an additional layer of complexity.

What's next for Sticks and Stones

I can't wait to implement their socket api's to incorporate the 1v1 aspect. This game has so much potential and so much more to go.

Built With

• amazon-web-services
• javascript
• phaser.js
• planck
• velo