Cookie Empire

Cookie Empire APL home screen

Inspiration

My goal was to produce a highly engaging #VoiceFirst game which Alexa users love to play, supplemented with a visual component!

Except for a few notable exceptions, most of the Alexa games I've played are pretty bad and I quickly get bored.

I wanted to create a game which sucks you in but remains simple to play.

I was inspired by clicker games such as cookie clicker. They provide highly engaging and addictive game mechanics based on simple inputs. They fitted perfectly into what I wanted to build.

What it does

Cookie Empire lets you bake cookies. A lot of cookies!

In fact, the more cookies you bake, the higher your net cookie worth is and the bigger your empire will be!

It's easy to bake cookies...just say "bake".

Of course, the journey to a global cookie empire is not so simple. It will take time and dedication. Something I like to refer to as....cookiecation.

How I built it

The game is hand coded using the ASK NodeJS v2 SDK with AWS DynamoDB for data storage and AWS Lambda as the skill back-end.

Challenges I ran into

This was my first time using and experimenting with APL. It has a steep learning curve but once you have gotten used to the logic, syntax and it's quirks, it's pretty fun to use and a powerful way to add a visual component to your skill.