https://github.com/amamenko/hollywoodle
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon meets Wordle 🎬
https://github.com/amamenko/hollywoodle
game hollywood mongodb movies oscars tmdb-api typescript wordle
Last synced: about 1 year ago
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Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon meets Wordle 🎬
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/amamenko/hollywoodle
- Owner: amamenko
- License: mit
- Created: 2022-03-20T17:49:21.000Z (about 4 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-03-16T05:14:11.000Z (about 1 year ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-03-28T18:21:26.400Z (about 1 year ago)
- Topics: game, hollywood, mongodb, movies, oscars, tmdb-api, typescript, wordle
- Language: TypeScript
- Homepage: https://hollywoodle.vercel.app
- Size: 1.74 MB
- Stars: 3
- Watchers: 2
- Forks: 3
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE.txt
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README
[![MIT License][license-shield]][license-url]
[![LinkedIn][linkedin-shield]][linkedin-url]
Hollywoodle
A MERN-stack Hollywood-themed
Wordle Spinoff Game
Visit Website
·
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## Background
[Wordle](https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html) is a massively popular web-based [word game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordle) initially created by Welsh software engineer [Josh Wardle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Wardle) and currently owned by the [New York Times Company](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/business/media/new-york-times-wordle.html). Since the game's incepetion, many clones and similar spin-off games have been created - perhaps the largest listing of all such games can be found at the [Wordleverse website](https://wordleverse.net/).
In March of 2022, it seemed that the Wordleverse had a dearth of movie-related Wordle spin-offs. With the [94th Academy Awards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/94th_Academy_Awards) (popularly known as the Oscars) quickly approaching, the timing seemed perfect for a Hollywood-themed Wordle-like game to enter the Wordleverse.
Originally the brainchild of Alex Jaloza, Hollywoodle provides users two new daily actors to link either by movie or by co-star with the fewest possible guesses. A user's "score" is divided into two components - degrees of separation and number of moves.
The degrees of separation follows the original rules of the [Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon) and is defined as the number of correctly guessed films that connect the two actors.
The player's moves are defined as the sum of the player's interactions while completing a game. The user gains a certain amount of "moves" for each guess - 1 move for a correct guess, 3 moves for an incorrect guess, and 2 moves for a guess of a movie that only features the final actor and not the first or current one (partial credit). If a user needs a hint they are penalized 1 move.
In essence, the objective of the game is to link the two given actors with as few moves as possible - similar to the [Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon).
## Functionality
Hollywoodle is built with the [MERN](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/mern-stack/) stack and features a React-Typescript front-end with a Node/Express Typescript server linked to a [MongoDB Atlas Database](https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/lp/try2?utm_source=google&utm_campaign=gs_americas_united_states_search_core_brand_atlas_desktop&utm_term=mongodb%20atlas&utm_medium=cpc_paid_search&utm_ad=e&utm_ad_campaign_id=12212624338&adgroup=115749704063&gclid=CjwKCAjwuYWSBhByEiwAKd_n_lJ4kymFETif8K0fhDtRPrhaNIB_lQsxRKht4u1YhiX-tQDOXAwD2hoCS9kQAvD_BwE). The application can be broken down into two parts:
### Server-side
- Uses the [TMDB API](https://developers.themoviedb.org/3/people/get-popular-people) to update and store the details of two popular actors (including names, images, TMDB IDs, genders, and most popular recent movie data) in a MongoDB Atlas Database every night at midnight ET.
- Queries the MongoDB database to send actor data to the front-end (both daily and archived data.)
- If a user completes the connection for the first time that day, updates aggregated list of all top paths played by players based on degrees of separation and popularity.
- Sends live changes of top daily paths via [Socket.IO](https://socket.io/) to client side if a user is viewing the top paths component.
### Client-side
- Requests actor data (daily or archived) from the backend and renders details about the initial and final actor for the user to guess the relation.
- Sets a [dark/light-mode](https://css-tricks.com/a-complete-guide-to-dark-mode-on-the-web/) theme based on the user's native preferred specification (although this can also be manually toggled by the user).
- Uses React's [Context API](https://reactjs.org/docs/context.html) to store and access widely-used state variables such as total moves and dark-mode configuration throughout the application.
- [Autosuggests](https://github.com/moroshko/react-autosuggest) movies or actors (details of which are once again fetched from TMDB) based on a user's search input.
- Determines the correctness of a user's guess selection by means of movie cast ID lookup that searches for a match using TMDB's movie and actor IDs.
- Displays a popcorn emoji (🍿) [confetti rain effect](https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-rewards) when a user successfuly links the first given actor with the final given actor.
## Deployment
Client-side deployed with [Vercel](https://vercel.com/). Custom domain from [Freenom](https://www.freenom.com/en/index.html?lang=en) with DNS routing provided by [Cloudflare](https://www.cloudflare.com/).
Server deployed via [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/). Free Heroku dyno kept awake with [UptimeRobot](https://uptimerobot.com/).
## License
Distributed under the MIT License. See `LICENSE.txt` for more information.
## Contact
Avraham (Avi) Mamenko - avimamenko@gmail.com
Project Link: [https://github.com/amamenko/hollywoodle](https://github.com/amamenko/hollywoodle)
## Press Feature
Metro UK - ["Wordle meets Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon in Hollywoodle"](https://metro.co.uk/2022/05/23/wordle-meets-six-degrees-of-kevin-bacon-in-hollywoodle-16695016/)
## Acknowledgements
- [The Movie Database (TMDB) API](https://developers.themoviedb.org/3)
- [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/)
- [UptimeRobot](https://uptimerobot.com/)
- [node-cron](https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-cron)
- [react-rewards](https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-rewards)
- [Best-README-Template](https://github.com/othneildrew/Best-README-Template)
[license-shield]: https://img.shields.io/github/license/othneildrew/Best-README-Template.svg?style=for-the-badge
[license-url]: https://github.com/amamenko/hollywoodle/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
[linkedin-shield]: https://img.shields.io/badge/-LinkedIn-black.svg?style=for-the-badge&logo=linkedin&colorB=555
[linkedin-url]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avrahammamenko