Knuckle Ninja

Problem

I wanted to see how far MediaPipe hand tracking had come and whether it could carry a casual browser game. Most webcam games feel laggy or imprecise. The hardware isn't the problem, the swipe-detection heuristic is.

Role

Designed the game, wrote the swipe detector on top of MediaPipe's hand landmarks, tuned the difficulty curve, shipped it. The detector took the most time. The first version triggered on any rapid hand movement, including reaching for the keyboard. Final version checks for a directional gesture across a sustained velocity.

Outcome

Plays well on a laptop webcam. Phones don't have the camera angle to work without a stand, so it's a desktop game. The technical answer to my original question: yes, MediaPipe is good enough for casual interaction games, but the gesture detector is where the craft lives.

Stack