Brain Power Games

This side project still has a lot rough edges, unfinished features and ideas in the queue, but it's in a pretty good MVP state.

It started from playing a memory card matching game (the IRL kind) with my kids. I thought it would be fun to build a web version which would mix and arrange the cards for you. I built the first version in CodePen, which became the first game, Match.

Sudoki was the 2nd game to build. I had started to play Sudoku again, and loved the challenge of trying to build my own version. I also found it pretty amusing that you can just map the typical 1-9 numbers to anything, including emojis, which led to the emoji game modes and calling it Sudoki. While it's not as practical and has some UX issues to fix, it's a fun twist on the classic game.

Decode was the 3rd game, and is at the moment the one I play nearly every day. It's basically a 1-player version of the game Mastermind, where you try to solve for a hidden code based on clues.

Play now at BrainPower.Games

With this being a personal project, I only designed the UI enough to where I had clear idea for some of the basics for layout, navigation and components. I wanted games to play, so I prioritized building the functionality and designing with code for the V1/MVP, leaning heavily on emojis to help expedite this stage. Now with 3 games in place, there's a lot of fun work ahead to refine and improve on between the UI, UX, theming and game features.

With the logo/icon, I've cycled through a few versions, none of which I've really liked very well. The 4th installment (the "just enough" one) feels pretty good though and may influence some of the design changes, bringing some of its personality into the UI. I was going for just the "brain" and "power" elements, but in all of the iterations on the brain segments and lines, a face kept coming through. So I went with it, but tried to keep it low-key.

That weird, happy brain-face is growing on me.

I chose to go with Next JS for it's file-based routing and easier DX, and to stay within the React ecosystem as well, getting more experience with state management, hooks, providers, etc. I've hand-coded it, from the React components to the supporting JavaScript and CSS, and am using Jest for tests.