Perfect Pump

Inspiration The inspiration came from those small, everyday moments of trying to stop a microwave or a stopwatch at exactly the right second. I wanted to take that universal human urge for "perfect timing" and turn it into a competitive social experience. The goal was to create a game that looks simple on the surface but reveals a high skill ceiling the more you play.

What it does Perfect Pump is a reflex-based timing game where players attempt to stop a filling gauge at a precise target. It calculates accuracy down to the millisecond, allowing for intense competition through the community and "offset" scores.

How I built it I built the game using a modern web stack designed for low-latency interactions, ensuring that every tap is registered nearly instantly. The core logic relies on a high-precision timer to calculate the millisecond offset between the player's stop and the actual target. I focused on creating a clean, minimalist UI that keeps the player focused on the gauge while using CSS animations to handle the fading visual cues.

Challenges I ran into The most significant challenge was ensuring "input lag" didn't ruin the experience. In a game measured in milliseconds, even a tiny delay between a click and the logic trigger can feel unfair. I spent a lot of time optimizing the event listeners and state updates to ensure the game felt snappy.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of I’m particularly proud of the "Perfect Pump" feel...that specific moment when the physics and the timer align perfectly. Successfully implementing a millisecond-accurate scoring system that feels consistent across different devices was a major win for me. I also managed to keep the game loop extremely tight, allowing players to jump in and out of a round in seconds.

What I learned This project taught me a lot about the psychology of "near misses" and how to keep players engaged through simple feedback loops. I also gained a deeper understanding of handling high-precision time in a browser environment and how to manage state transitions effectively when visual elements are constantly changing.

What's next for Perfect Pump The next step is to integrate deeper social features to further engage the community.

Built With

• devvit
• phaser.js
• typescript