Vokabul8

Vokabul8 is a betting platform for vocabulary. It is aimed at adults to use their wallet money which is connected to VeightCoin(Wallet for virtual currency) to play 4 different games that the platform provides. 

The details of each game are given below:

• What’s the word?: This game runs throughout the day with a timer and a snippet of the current question being shown to the user on every page. 

Anyone who has sufficient balance in their wallet can play and put their bets for the game where they need to guess the missing letters of the current word to complete the word in an English vocabulary. 

• Golden Number: Another game that runs for all the remaining questions in a day. Every day the platform runs 180 for 8 minutes each, where “What’s the word?” is the active game for those 8 minutes. 

However, the remaining games are still unknown to the user. In Golden Number, the user needs to guess the number of characters any game would have from the remaining games for the day. 

• Letters of Fortune: Similar to the “Golden Number”, the user can play this for the remaining games of the day. 

However, in this game, a user will be presented with 4 groups of letters and they would need to guess the presence of a letter in a particular game from the remaining games by selecting any of the 4 groups. 

Each has its own odds and bets. 

• The Ultimate Challenge: This game is very similar to “What’s the Word?” but instead of a public game from the platform which is open to all, it has a fixed room for a limited number of members. 

Any user can create a room and invite their friends and peers to play along. They can select to join any existing room from the platform. When the game starts it runs for a fixed number of rounds which is set at the beginning by the creator of the room. 

Every round accumulates some points according to the answers given and at the end of the final round winner or joint winners are announced for the challenge and given the winnings too. 

Apart from gaming and betting on the platform, there is a social aspect of the platform where a Facebook-like feed and chat options are available to the users who can easily engage with everyone’s posts on the platform itself. 

Product Approach

We started building the product right from the Idea stage. The founders wanted to build the full product instead of approaching it with an MVP and thus the entire product was built according to the founder’s specifications. 

• For this, we took a full-product development approach and undertook both the designs and the development of the product. 

• In addition to this, we built a Dashboard for the Admin to manage all questions and all the data needed for the operations of the product. 

• An import tool is also a part of the dashboard where the admin can populate or import multiple questions in bulk all at one go. 

Technical Approach

• We built Vokabul8 web app and the Dashboard with Laravel as the backend. 
• Vue.js and Tailwind were chosen to build the front end for the platform. 
• We chose MySql as the Database for the project and,
• A detailed custom Algorithm was a major piece of the development that helped the selection and game processes all together for the platform. 
• We hosted the solution in the Digital Ocean cloud server with OneSignal as the notification hub and library for the project. 
• For emails, we have used Mailgun as our preferred 3rd party service. 

One of the significant tech dependencies on the product is the implementation of sockets that helped synchronize the timer for every player around the world.

Our primary challenges included optimizing the algorithm that helped process the questions with the deserved player to win. 

Synchronizing the timer was also a very challenging event of the product that we developed and it took precision on the sockets to get it right.  

Development Approach

The development approach that we followed for the project was to,

• Get the web app for the consumers and the dashboard for the admin. 
• We followed agile methodologies while developing the product with multiple sprints
• Google Sheets was a handy tool that was shared by our clients as our task management tool for keeping a track of all the tasks contained within the product. 

Current State

At present, our clients are in the Beta Phase where they are seeking active feedback from their target audience. 

The release got delayed with multiple changes from the client from the original timeline and scope but they were able to release it to the market by plugging VeightCoin to play with. 

They are currently in the testing phase and plan to make all the iterations they are collecting feedback from their customers. 

We are currently supporting the project for improvements and taking a cognizance of all the feedback from their team which can further improve the product.