Inspiration
One of our teammates is really into geography, and the rest of us weren’t quite at his level yet. This was our main inspiration, and we loved the idea of learning in an interactive way that keeps you wanting to play.
What it does
This app lets three players create a room and play together. Each player is randomly assigned one type of hint: a fact, flag colors, or a picture. Only two of the three hints are true, and the team must collaborate to figure out which ones and connect them to a city. The player with the fact hint pins the city on the map. Scoring depends on how quickly the pin is placed and how close it is to the correct location, the lower the score, the better. It’s a fun, interactive way to test teamwork, quick thinking, and geography knowledge.
How we built it
We built the mobile app using React Native with Expo for the frontend. Firebase handled authentication, multiplayer room management, and also stored our database of country information. Flask API managed the backend logic, and Grok helped generate and manage some of the geography clues used in the game.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest challenge was coming up with the right idea. We spent hours brainstorming different concepts and trying to find something that aligned with the hackathon tracks while also being feasible to build in the time we had. We had to think about what was practical, what would actually work technically, and what would be fun for users. Once we settled on the idea and had a clear direction, the rest of the development process went much more smoothly.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re proud that we built a fully concurrent multiplayer experience where three players can join a room and play together in real time. We also developed the project as a mobile app instead of a web app, which added another layer of complexity. On top of that, we successfully integrated user authentication for sign-in and got the core gameplay working so players can actually join, collaborate, and play the game together on their phones just like we originally envisioned.
What we learned
Through this project, we learned a lot about collaboration and time management while working under the pressure of a hackathon. We also got comfortable experimenting with newer AI models, building a mobile app, and creating a concurrent multiplayer experience. One of our biggest takeaways was not limiting ideas to only what we already know, since with today’s tools it’s possible to learn new technologies and figure out solutions along the way.
What's next for incredible project
Next, we want to expand the game beyond geography into other subjects like history, science, and culture. We also want to allow more than three players in a room so bigger groups can play together. In the future, we hope to add leaderboards, different difficulty levels, and a larger set of cities and clues so the game feels more challenging and fun to keep playing.
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