ConUGuessr

💡 Inspiration As Concordia students, we realized that a lot of people spend years on campus without really knowing it. Buildings blur together, shortcuts go unnoticed, and most of us rely on Google Maps or "vibes."

We wanted a fun way to help people actually learn the campus—so we turned it into a game. Inspired by GeoGuessr, ConUGuessr challenges players to recognize real locations around Concordia and test how well they know their own school.

🗺️ What It Does ConUGuessr is a campus-based guessing game where players are dropped into a random Concordia location and have to figure out where they are.

The Challenge: Based on visual and contextual clues, players make a guess on the map.

The Scoring: Players are scored based on the accuracy of their guess (distance from the actual location).

The Goal: It’s designed to be both competitive and educational—whether you’re a first-year trying to learn campus or a senior confident you know every corner.

🛠️ How We Built It We utilized a modern stack to ensure performance and interactivity:

Frontend: Built with Next.js for a fast, responsive, and intuitive UI.

Backend: Developed using Python with FastAPI to manage game logic, location data, and scoring.

Real-Time Features: Integrated WebSockets for smooth, interactive gameplay and instant state updates between the client and server.

The frontend handles the game flow and user interaction, while the backend acts as the brain of the operation. WebSockets bind the two together to keep the experience seamless.

🚧 Challenges We Ran Into Game Balance: Designing logic that feels fair and rewarding—balancing accuracy vs. fun so the game isn’t too easy or too punishing.

Real-Time Architecture: Structuring the backend to support real-time updates via WebSockets.

Integration: Coordinating frontend and backend communication under tight hackathon time constraints.

🏆 Accomplishments We’re Proud Of Full-Stack Execution: Building a functioning full-stack, real-time game in a short time frame.

Unique Value: Creating a hyper-local, campus-specific experience rather than a generic guessing game.

Tech Integration: Successfully knitting together Next.js, FastAPI, and WebSockets.

From Idea to Demo: Turning a simple "what if" idea into a polished, playable demo.

🧠 What We Learned How to design real-time systems using WebSockets.

The importance of separation of concerns between frontend and backend.

Techniques for rapid prototyping and prioritization under pressure.

How small UX choices can drastically affect the "feel" of gameplay.

🚀 What’s Next for ConUGuessr Multiplayer: Introducing multiplayer modes and live leaderboards.

Content Expansion: Adding more locations and distinct difficulty tiers.

Gamification: Timed challenges and daily puzzles.

Scaling: Expansion to other universities.

Polish: Better visuals and detailed map feedback after guesses.

Built With

• fastapi
• nextjs
• python
• websockets