After a long week, the MightyMeld Speed Build Hackathon has officially ended. We started this journey with a simple but ambitious goal: to push the limits of what can be accomplished with MightyMeld within a strict timeframe.
Today, we're delighted to announce the eight winners of the $2,500 prize pool. We'll also share the participants' remarkable achievements and the lessons we've learned.
Let’s dive in!
Tailwind Speed Build
With the speed builds we wanted to highlight speed by testing how fast you can update your UI with MightyMeld, the results were impressive. In fact, five participants finished building the memory game from the starter template to a finished app in under six minutes. Three, including Opabode Abdulmujeeb (4:52), Longe Ekeso Kabir (4:25), and the category winner James Murdza (4:17) 🏆 finished in less than five minutes. You can tell James got very familiar with the Tailwind class names by doing the speed build over and over again, which resulted in him finishing at the fastest pace.
Chakra Speed Build
Tailwind was the styling framework of choice for this challenge as only 8% of all submitted entries opted for the Chakra UI speed build. Enarebebe Abraham Ebimawe wins the speed build prize for Chakra UI with a time of 6:47, bagging the $500 award with ease as there was way less competition in this category.
To increase your odds of winning, choose less popular hackathon categories and avoid intense competition.
Best UI Design Improvement
Numerous excellent submissions in this category enhanced game design and feel. Tohir Babatunde's winning entry significantly improved the game's aesthetics with a crisp, clean, and exciting look.
Tohir uniquely altered the tiles, infusing new energy and fundamentally changing the game with colorful characters. This made the tile-matching task a bit easier and definitely more fun. Kudos to Tohir!
Igbanibo Alex and Victor Esso Nmakwe deserve honorable mentions within this category. Igbanibo’s “Jedi training” theme transported the player to a fictive world with just a few words, while Victor’s complete makeover of the game was refreshing.
Best Fully Responsive Solution
The submissions in this category did not go as deep as we expected. We realized this was a problem with the contest, not the contestants! Our memory game design had so little going on, there was very little one could do to make it responsive without starting to add UI or enhance the functionality, which were entirely different categories.
However, Ahmad Uba Ahmad’s entry stood out by effectively supporting various screen sizes, centring and resizing the game to optimally use the available space. It was a simple yet perfect execution of responsive design.
Best Dark Mode
The dark mode category was highly contested with many outstanding entries. Johnny Iroele’s entry stood out with its neon colors and space-themed background, capturing the essence of dark mode and setting the right game mood, drawing inspiration from classic arcade games.
Eke Okechukwu also delivered an exceptional entry that embraced the arcade spirit, though it fell slightly short of Johnny’s entry. Eke’s work used dark as well as light text, and thus was less consistent in its color theming. A great entry narrowly edged out by an even better one.
Most Impressive Expanded Functionality
This was a fun category to judge, we wanted to see new functionality that enhanced the entire gameplay experience and Adaeze Ndupu takes the win here.
Many entries adjusted the tile board size, tracked scores and added timers, some even added creative hint buttons. Adeze’s entry was a classic, enhancing gameplay with a stand-out two-player feature, unlike others who tried that, hers was clean and elegant with a leaderboard allowing players to take turns on the same board and accumulate points for superior performance.
We also found Godwin Ogu's game very innovative and worth a mention. Of the entries that had different board sizes, Godwin’s was the best due to its progression system. You start with a few tiles and as you win, new levels unlock with more tiles.
Unexpected Uses of MightyMeld
The winner of the Unexpected Uses of MightyMeld category is Opabode Abdulmujeeb. He found cool ways to use the MightyMeld AI feature to accelerate development, the brevity of the prompts he gave were quite impressive, almost like he was typing another language entirely. This discovery helped him complete his speed build quickly, making him one of the fastest entries we received.
Best Animated Entry
Animations are easy to add willy-nilly but it takes true skill to place animations appropriately.
Enarebebe Ebimawe wins this category with his environmental animations that brought the game to life, along with the balloons and an exceptional win state animation. He also clinched the Chakra speed build award, talk about a winning streak.
Judge-Paul Ogebe's light flipping animation earned an honorable mention for adding energy without distracting from gameplay. Ikeotuonye Christopher's smooth loading blob and board animations, and Soroh Daukariebi Michael's animated progress bar, were also notable honorable mentions in this category.
Looking Forward
We are grateful to all participants for their dedication and enthusiasm, we are committed to enhancing MightyMeld even further. Stay tuned for future updates and events as we empower developers to create with greater freedom, speed, and joy.
Congratulations again to all winners and participants!