Home's a Maze (HAM)
Daily 3D maze challenges with a twist—mint your wins onchain. HAM's a 3D web game that offers daily casual challenges where players solve a new maze everyday.
Demo
About
Why are you participating for Based Africa? Growing up in Lagos, Nigeria, I developed a fascination with complex, immersive environments, and my inspiration for HAM stems from navigating local architecture and cultural spaces. As an African artist and technologist, I'm motivated to contribute to our tech ecosystem by creating relatable digital experiences. HAM’s blockchain-based, community-oriented approach connects the global gaming audience to Africa's innovative spirit and storytelling potential. Through Based Africa, I aim to support other African creators, contributing to a collective vision of digital innovation rooted in African culture. Additional Features During the Buildathon, I focused on optimizing HAM for mobile devices, ensuring a smooth and engaging gameplay experience for mobile users. I also implemented ERC-4337 and smart accounts, enhancing the user experience by simplifying transaction handling and making the onchain interactions more accessible. Additionally, I secured gas credits from Optimism and Thirdweb, which allowed me to cover gas fees for players. This initiative not only reduces barriers to entry for users but also promotes broader engagement with the game’s blockchain features.
How it's made
What challenges are you focusing on? I'm addressing challenges in African representation in technology and gaming, demonstrating that African developers and artists can compete globally with unique perspectives and skillsets. Additionally, by using blockchain, HAM addresses challenges of ownership and recognition for digital creators, providing an onchain mechanism for players to retain proof of their achievements. How does your submission address this challenge? HAM offers a simple yet captivating gaming experience with daily maze challenges, enhanced by blockchain technology that provides ownership and authenticity. By allowing players to mint their results as NFTs, HAM empowers them to truly own their digital achievements, highlighting the unique potential of African-developed games in the global tech space. The project also serves as an inspiration for young African developers and creators to explore emerging technologies like blockchain and Web3 through accessible and engaging gaming experiences. Challenges we ran into One significant hurdle was achieving a seamless integration of blockchain technology while maintaining a casual and accessible gameplay experience. The onchain features of HAM initially resulted in high development costs, which I addressed by optimizing features and adjusting gameplay mechanics to align with my current constraints. From a technical perspective, I encountered challenges integrating Unity with the Thirdweb SDK and implementing ERC-4337 for transaction handling. Additionally, I worked on optimizing the game for mobile devices to ensure a smooth user experience across platforms. On the non-technical side, I originally hosted the game on Netlify, but I transitioned to AWS s3 with CloudFront to enhance security and performance, particularly in anticipation of bot attacks as transactions are currently gasless. This move also allowed for more efficient gas fee management, ensuring a better experience for players engaging with the game’s on-chain features.