Project details
Game System
Ball Knower
A realtime NFL roster-link game where players race the clock by connecting athletes through shared team-season appearances.
- Live project
- Available
- Role
- Product design, full-stack engineering, deployment, and production testing
- Stack
- Next.js / React / Fastify
Problem
Ball Knower turns roster trivia into a live head-to-head game. The product challenge is making a dense NFL player graph feel immediate: enter as a guest, queue into a match, search eligible players, and understand the chain under a short turn timer.
System
The app uses a deterministic game engine for move validation, a realtime API for match state, and a responsive web client for lobby, match, profile, and records views. The data pipeline normalizes NFL roster and appearance history so the game validates same-team-season links instead of relying on loose name matching.
Outcome
The deployed product now has public guest entry, realtime matches, profile surfaces, and production smoke & soak coverage.