Show HN: Play Fishbowl at your next virtual hangout (free, open source)

Show HN: Play Fishbowl at your next virtual hangout (free, open source)(fishbowl-game.com)

50 points by avimoondra2 6 years ago | 21 comments

Hola HN, author here!

I wanted to build a free, online version of a favorite party game I used to play with friends, in person... so we could continue being social, at a distance!

The first version was created and tested in ~3 weeks. Check out the source here: https://github.com/avimoondra/fishbowl. It's built with Typescript, React, Material UI, Apollo GraphQL, Hasura, Express, and Postgres. And it's deployed on Render.

Thanks to a bunch of folks! The amazing Hasura community on Discord, friends for consultation on some React and deployment options, and even more friends (and friends of friends) for alpha and beta testing! More features to come soon :)

Would love any feedback or to discuss anything about the game or tech. Stay safe, and sane!

ViViDboarder 6 years ago | |

Dope! I made a much more basic version of this for my own use a few weekends back. Yours is way better. Thanks for sharing!

avimoondra2 6 years ago | | |

That's awesome! I appreciate that, and hope you enjoy it! Would love to chat about it anytime... lot of interesting game dynamics to consider, especially over video calls. Feel free to leave your email through this feedback form I set up for the game (https://forms.gle/6a5wnBo7D6pDdcxb9) if you'd like to get in touch!

speps 6 years ago | |

Can you describe the "party game"?

avimoondra2 6 years ago | | |

Of course! It's a guessing game, designed for any group of all ages! You'll need at least 4 to play, but it only gets more fun with more players (I recommend 6 - 12). More is explained on the home page here https://fishbowl-game.com/, and there are also instructions as you play, especially if it's your first time.

Here's another description, to play if you can in-person: https://funattic.com/how-to-play-fishbowl-game/

the_pwner224 6 years ago | | |

Literally the only two things on the submitted website are a picture of a fish and concise instructions on how to play the game.

montroser 6 years ago |

This is great. For demo purposes, maybe it could be nice to be able to join a game with strangers? Accumulate each four next people and then put them in a game together.

At work, we switched from zoom to https://team.video, and one really cool thing about it is that you can play a collaborative word game while you wait for the meeting to get started. A small thing, but those first few minutes go from being totally frustrating to a nice little reprieve.

avimoondra2 6 years ago | |

Thanks!

That's an interesting idea - It has crossed my mind, but I haven't yet fully explored the idea of playing with strangers likely due to my own bias playing with closer groups of friends (often with inside jokes).

Maybe even a speed round or trial round that you can play by yourself before you ask your group to play together.

Are there any features of Fishbowl you might see for work friends or in a professional setting? (and thanks for the tip on team.video)

deanstag 6 years ago |

How is the game mechanics different from the Monikers?

http://www.monikersgame.com/

Edit: Nevermind. Monikers is a version of the fishbowl game.

avimoondra2 6 years ago | |

I think that's right - was thinking about adding "packs" like Pokemon or Celebrities, etc. to make it even easier to play! But submitting your own words or phrases makes it personal, and dynamic (different every occasion)

BeefySwain 6 years ago |

Is there a name for the "genre" of games like this? Party games played on a mobile phone in a browser using a short code to group up.

Other examples include the Jack Box party game collection and Spyfall.

XaspR8d 6 years ago | |

Not that I know of, but I've always thought there was a cool project opportunity for a Mario Party-esque platform of minigames with room-code join-by-phone controllers.

Sony has the "PlayLink" platform on PS4 but it didn't seem to get much headway. The only game I saw any awareness of in my circles was "That's You". Looked neat enough but mostly drew Jackbox comparisons.

avimoondra2 6 years ago | | |

Mario Party games would be amazing!! Similar also to n64 Pokemon Stadium mini games, which I still play once in a while today :p Great ideas for some future projects...

I'm not aware of a name to the genre, but shelter in place might give proper birth to it!

zzo38computer 6 years ago |

I don't like "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app" with nothing else visible. Even if JavaScript is disabled, I should still want to be able to read the documentation, and if source code is available, to access the source code. Even if nothing else works when JavaScript is disabled, which can make sense sometimes.

avimoondra2 6 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback! Will add this to the set of issues I'm tracking. You are correct in that nothing will work when JS is disabled for this app.

Regards to the source, it can all be found here: https://github.com/avimoondra/fishbowl.

sid-s 6 years ago |

The perfect party game for quarantime and beyond!

mariusz331 6 years ago |

Great job shipping and thanks for open sourcing!

dusted 6 years ago |

Anyone want to try it out? Join this lobby: OQUG (I've no idea how to play or what it is)

darkwizard42 6 years ago |

Pumped to see this come to life! Enjoyed the initial tests and it looks great!

hendersonsam456 6 years ago |

this will be good for isolation lolz.

ykevinator 6 years ago |

This is great