Exploding Chickens: Project Overview

Computer Science Dec 11, 2020

In a nutshell

A beautiful, online alternative to the popular kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette, Exploding Kittens. Exploding Chickens is a card game with explosions and of course, chickens — all crafted on the Node.js platform. The rules are simple. Each player takes turns drawing a card or playing a card, rolling the dice of luck so that they can survive for yet another turn. From there, the drawing deck slowly shrinks and the explosions only become more frequent. So, who will be the last one standing?

565+ games played all over the world
80+ hours of play time
3-15 min average game time

Project Spec

v1.x.x

Full-stack web app built on Nodejs with Fastify, Mongoose, Socket.io, Handlebars, Tailwinds
Supported 2-7 players per game room
Included first expansion pack: Yolking Around
Development period: December 2020 - October 2021

v2.x.x (in private beta)

Full-stack web app built on Nodejs with Fastify, Mongoose, Socket.io, Handlebars, Tailwinds
Support for lobbies with up to 100 players divided into 2-6 player game rooms
Player account system to save default profiles, games played, and purchased expansion packs
Complete test coverage over the entire backend codebase
Development period: October 2021 - Present

Status

Latest Release (v1.1.7)

In this release we added a few features and squashed some bugs:

Added an inline feedback form on all pages using Typeform
Game log now shows the total number of events
Modified game code icon on sidebar
Patched a bug where NaN would appear as avg play time on home page

Release date: October 7th, 2021

In the works (v2.0.0-beta)

We've been working overtime behind-the-scenes to completely rework the foundation supporting Exploding Chickens. We hope these changes will transform our game into a more capable and powerful platform. Here's a quick summary of what's to come:

Support for lobbies! 100's of players can now play together, anywhere
Tons of new host options: auto play timeout, room size, grouping method, remove host from games
Favor framework re-built to be more intuitive and clear
Player's can now leave games themselves without being kicked
Backend and frontend completely re-written to perform at scale
Full test coverage over the entire codebase, used to catch issues before they happen

Targeted beta release date: June 1st, 2022