Jingle Jumble : Christmas Word Puzzle Game with Amazon Q AI

The game has two main parts Players unscramble Christmas-themed words like "reindeer" or "ornament" using hints. For every correct answer, players earn decorations stars, baubles,and gifts and drag them onto a virtual Christmas tree At the end, they can share a snapshot of their decorated tree.

I had to design both the front end and the back end. I chose Pixi JS for rendering the game UI. It’s great for smooth graphics and drag-and-drop functionality.

Challenge: I was completely new to Pixi.js

Amazon Q Helped When I didn’t know how to render a draggable canvas in Pixi.js, Amazon Q provided step-by-step snippets.

I needed a system where words would be scrambled and hints displayed dynamically. Here’s the flow I implemented

Fetch words and hints from a predefined JSON list

Randomize the order for each session

Allow players to drag and drop letters to solve the puzzle.

Challenge: Writing the drag-and-drop letter rearranging logic was tricky.
How Amazon Q Helped:
Amazon Q explained how to implement drag-and-drop behavior using Pixi.js's interaction manager. I was amazed at its clear examples—I didn’t have to search through confusing documentation!

Once players solve a puzzle, they earn decorations (stars, lights, etc.). These items appear in an inventory panel and can be dragged onto the Christmas tree canvas.

Challenge: Implementing drag-and-drop across different parts of the game—inventory and tree—took time.

Amazon Q guided me to Use Sprite objects in Pixi.js for decorations.Handle drag events cleanly so items could "stick" to the tree canvas once dropped

Learning new libraries (Pixi.js, Devvit APIs): I struggled at first, but Amazon Q’s clear code snippets and explanations made things click

Debugging errors: Whether it was a wrong function call or a typo in my JSON, Amazon Q quickly pointed out what was wrong and how to fix it

Backend integration: Connecting the frontend game to the backend was daunting, but Amazon Q made API development easy by suggesting RESTful designs.

Christmas-themed