Glowing Blox

Glowing Blox is a turn-based block-strategy game created by piparo.tech. Two players place and rotate shapes on a shared board, trying to leave their opponent without a valid move. It can be played locally on one device, online with friends, or against a computer opponent.

Project overview

I helped shape the product from its first Expo prototype into a released iOS and Android game. My work spans the touch-first mobile experience, the shared rules engine, online multiplayer, backend services, the public website, automated testing, and release workflows. The product was developed collaboratively at piparo.tech; the areas below describe my concrete engineering contributions.

A central challenge was keeping a spatial board game immediate on a small touchscreen while ensuring that local and networked matches follow the same deterministic rules. The architecture therefore shares game logic across clients and server, while the interface gives players clear feedback about placement validity, turn ownership, and the next available action.

Areas of contribution

• Product foundation: Set up the original Expo app, navigation, settings, game state, monorepo structure, validation, and continuous integration that became the foundation of the released product.
• Touch-first board controls: Built and refined direct manipulation for moving and rotating pieces through taps and drag gestures, with an optional directional control for players who prefer explicit buttons.
• Game engine: Extracted the rules and state transitions into a shared TypeScript engine, added deterministic game tests, and kept client and server behavior aligned as the game evolved.
• Local play and computer opponents: Developed configurable offline matches on one device and added bot opponents, including a stronger expert difficulty for solo play.
• Online multiplayer: Implemented lobby creation and joining, shareable invitations, synchronized turns, reconnect behavior, player presence, rematches, and lightweight reactions between opponents.
• Authoritative backend: Built and hardened the Go game server and its real-time protocol so that online actions are validated, persisted, and distributed from one authoritative game state.
• Player continuity: Added deep links and turn notifications, supported several concurrent matches, and integrated platform game services for familiar player names without making sign-in a requirement for play.
• Interface feedback: Improved turn headers, invalid-placement guidance, modal transitions, winner presentation, offline states, responsive screen layouts, and visual effects that make successful moves feel more tangible.
• Quality and release engineering: Established unit, integration, race, real-device handoff, fault, and soak checks; maintained mobile builds and store submission; and developed staged release and rollback safeguards for multiplayer changes.
• Public product website: Evolved the game's website to Astro and maintained the product explanation, game instructions, store entry points, and deployment workflow.