Carnival

About the project

Before Christmas 2021, Entain marketing teams wanted to come with something special. The idea was to combine a few of our existing mechanics with a few new ones to create a carnival-like vibe. Entry point for a user was web page with a map, where he/she can enter a booth and play its game. The games were: Claw Machine, Penalty Shootout, Fortune Teller, Haunted House and Three Shells. Each game costs a specific amount of tickets, more tickets = chance to win a better prize. User can earn tickets by wagering, depositing or as a prize in a game.

My responsibilities

Back-end team did a great job with functionality around users and tickets. My job was to use that functionality and create all the games and page with map. The decision was that every game is a separate Vue.js app, to make it reusable. Communication with stakeholders, project managers, QA, UX/UI designer is a standard, as well as easy theming and localisation. As the deadline was tight, some of the games are actually the same Vue.js app, but based on the configured type, specific components are loaded asynchronously. To make the map more engaging, there is a possibility to use animations (LottieFiles), even it wasn’t used in production eventually.

The biggest challenge

Creating multiple games at the same time and making them connected was a pretty big challenge. But the biggest one was optimising 2D physics in Claw Machine. As there are multiple items presented to the user to choose from and those items are bumping to each other, there was a lot going on if the game should keep 60fps, especially on mobile.