Big Deck

Inspiration

Let's face it - we're all horribly sick of lockdown. There is a limit to how many long walks and trivia one individual can handle. Our team aims to create the ultimate reprieve: an online card game with a twist.

What it does

Big Deck takes the familiar concept of Zoom games and turns it into an unforgettable and addictive experience. You and your friends will fill in the blanks of prompt cards, and vote on which one was the funniest. To set our game aside from others, we're going to offer the option to create your own decks of cards, share them, and choose which decks you want to play with. You'll be able to scroll through decks by topics and themes, vote on your favourites, and make the game as welcoming or as esoteric as you desire.

Miss goofing around with your friends? Make a deck full of your favourite inside jokes! Organising a gathering over zoom for your book club? Choose a deck full of niche literary references! Don't want anything too fancy but still want a good time? Play with our classic deck, guaranteed to make you laugh!

How we built it

We created this game using Python’s Django framework. Using channels, we are able to implement asynchronous communication between users, allowing for the game to be played seamlessly in real time, while you hang out with your friends on zoom or discord. Our frontend was created using the vue.js framework.

We’ve used a system users are already familiar with; you set up a game, and share the code with your group of friends. Playing Big Deck will be intuitive and fun for anyone who’s played online games with their friends!

Roles

Bang

Bang worked on the frontend with Liam. He also worked on the script, and editted the video.

Alex

Alex worked on the backend with Vivian and Ainslie. She also worked on the script and video editting.

Ainslie

Ainslie worked on the backend with Alex and Vivian. She also worked with Liam to start integrating the backend and the frontend.

Liam

Liam worked on the front-end with Bang.

Vivian

Vivian worked on the backend with Alex and Ainslie.

Challenges we ran into

We came into this hackathon with no idea how to use Django or channels. This was a steep learning curve, and there is still quite a lot of work to be done. Whilst our frontend and backend have been designed and coded, we are still working on combining them into a fully functioning, deployable product. One of the big challenges here is combining the channels functionality with vue.js. We have researched the different ways we could go about this, and have determined we will need to create custom API's for our frontend to communicate with our backend.

What's next for Big Deck

We want this game to stay free and accessible. However, we’ll need to offset the costs of hosting the site and our databases, so we’re planning on a small monetization feature. For just a couple bucks, you’ll be able to buy decks created by your favorite comedians, who will earn a commission. We would like to trial this feature, and perhaps trial expanding the range of games the site offers.