Fate&Fortune | Devpost

Inspiration

Our team decided to create a project using Voiceflow's chatbot feature. We wanted to combine the Voiceflow chatbot with all of the elements of a classic RPG to fabricate a creative new genre of video game: the first ever chatbot text-based RPG! All four members of our team love playing games, especially RPGs, so we are excited to be able to use the Voiceflow chatbot to share our innovative game: Fate&Fortune

What it does

Fate&Fortune is a unique role-playing game that incorporates all of the elements of a classic RPG in the format of a conversation with a bot using text. The player is able to read the colorful storyline of F&F through text messages, as well as to transmit the choices they pick in the same format. The minimalistic interface provides a refreshing gaming experience for users, yet includes implementations of an immersive RPG, such as an intuitive battle system, reward and currency trading features, and challenging puzzles and minigames for users to complete. Each decision the player makes influences the pathway they take, encouraging players to play the game more than once to unlock all secret events and quests.

How we built it

To build F&F, we used the Voiceflow software to code our RPG and to organize the various pathways that the player could take. We created a website using html, css, and javascript on the side to showcase and promote the various features of our product and benefits of a chatbot RPG. The aim of our website is to encourage users to explore a genre of games that may be different from what they are used to. We used Replit to organize all of our HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code and to collaborate together, where we were able to be productive and efficient in our working process. We used Filmora Pro X to edit the video submission that we submitted, and github to organize all of our code.

Challenges we ran into

During the hackathon, we ran into a couple problems. Firstly, it was a challenge brainstorming our hackathon topic since there were no specific prompts. We finally decided to use Voiceflow to create a simple game, as Voiceflow’s minimalistic interface was appealing to us. Since this was our first experience with Voiceflow, we ran into multiple issues while trying to create our application, but we were able to consult external resources and work together to overcome technical problems. Because our voiceflow project was enormous, spanning over 400 blocks, the server started to lag behind, slowing down our working process in the end. Unfortunately, there was not much we could do about that, and we had to persist and finish our voiceflow project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This hackathon was our first freeform hackathon, and only our second hackathon that we've attended overall. Even though it proved difficult to create a freeform project without using a prompt, we're proud that we were able to create a final product and learn a lot about using the Voiceflow API. Knowing absolutely nothing about the API when we first entered Hack The North, we now have lots of experience with the API, as well as experience with chatbots and understanding how they work. We were also glad that we were able to adjust to the shorter hacking time period, and create a fully functional and unique project to submit.

What we learned

On the technical side, we learned a lot about the Voiceflow API, such as creating a flowchart with code to organize pathways and using the chatbot to create a game. We learned the different logics, user responses, and different integrations to add to our project, and we are very proud with what we have created.

More generally, we learned a lot about online hackathons, since Hack The North is the biggest student hackathon in Canada.

What's next for Fate&Fortune

Hack the North provided an amazing opportunity that challenged us to create something we were proud of. We are hoping to further develop this specific project together as we believe that chatbot games have potential to become increasingly popular in the future, and that Fate&Fortune could be the starting point for a new era of chatbot game technology. We are also looking forward to creating bigger and brighter projects in the future!