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Posted on by Matthew Monaco

React is a very cool javascript framework developed by a team at Facebook. It’s meant to build powerful and robust web apps. A little while after launching React, the team also launched a new product, React Native. An offshoot of the framework that was meant to develop mobile apps for Andriod & iOS.

First, you enter your user name and ‘create a new game’

I decided to create a little game in React Native to get a sense of the technology and its capabilities. As an additional challenge, the game would feature no graphics, just text, and colours. So, naturally, a word game was the best fit.

The user is given a game ID they can share with a friend to play against eachother

It was a challenge at first. Without much experience developing mobile apps, or React apps for that matter, there was a lot to get used to. Simple ideas became hours of trial and error and research.

Both players now choose a word, which will then be scrambled and sent to the other player. Players will be guessing their opponent’s word in real time, with the first person to guess right getting the point.

After a few snags, the game started to come together. Along with React Native, the game uses socket.io. This is a technology used by things like chat apps. Sockets allow developers to send data back and forth between users’ devices in real time, kind of like opening a phone line between two people.

Users race to guess their opponents word which has been scrambled up. Rounds increase in difficulty with words getting longer. Starting with 4-letter words, then 5, then 6, and so on.

This was a fun project to work on and I definitely learned a lot about React Native in the process.

First player to 3 points wins!