Inspiration
- I’ve always been drawn to fantasy stories, whether in books or games, and I’ve had a long-standing interest in integrating applications with AI. Combining the classic Snake and Ladder game with a visual novel style felt like the perfect way to merge my love for storytelling with interactive gameplay. The result was Literal Storyboard—a fantasy-inspired board game that adds a new twist to traditional gameplay through AI-driven quests and character interactions.
What it does
- In Literal Storyboard, players roll the dice to advance across a fantasy map, landing in different cities where they are given quests. Upon completing each quest, the AI rates their answers and provides either positive or negative feedback based on their responses. This interaction creates a dynamic and immersive experience where the player's choices shape the outcome of the game, adding an element of adventure and strategy to the classic board game format.
How we built it
- We built Literal Storyboard using a combination of Vite, Tailwind CSS, and TypeScript for the frontend, ensuring a smooth, fast, and responsive experience. The AI functionality was powered by Gemini AI, which handles quest generation and sentiment analysis, while Amazon Q served as our AI assistant for coding and project support. For deployment, we used AWS Amplify, ensuring seamless hosting and scaling of our app.
Challenges we ran into
- As someone still learning about AI, one of the biggest challenges was fine-tuning the AI to deliver consistent, contextually accurate responses. Ensuring the AI provided the right sentiment and feedback based on the player’s actions was a learning curve, especially when trying to balance creative freedom with AI reliability. It took a lot of trial and error to get the AI to behave the way I wanted without too many unpredictable outcomes.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- We’re proud of how well the AI handles the quest generation and sentiment analysis, giving the game a unique, interactive element that adds replay value. It was also my first time creating a game using React, which pushed me to manually code the character's movement and game logic, a process that was both challenging and rewarding. Overall, it was a great experience building a game with such a dynamic and evolving narrative.
What we learned
- Throughout the development process, I deepened my knowledge of React, Vite, and Tailwind CSS, gaining hands-on experience with modern web technologies. I also explored AI tuning using Google AI Studio and worked extensively with Amazon Q, which proved to be a valuable tool for project management and AI integration. Additionally, deploying the app with AWS Amplify gave me a better understanding of cloud services and how to ensure a scalable and reliable user experience.
What's next for Literal Storyboard
- Stabilize the gameplay by fixing bugs and refining the user experience.
- Expand the quests to create deeper, more intricate storylines that will keep players engaged.
- Redesign the frontend to better match the fantasy theme, creating a more immersive visual experience.
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