This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Gambhir Sharma
This is my submition for Amazon Q Build Games Challenge
The Spark of Nostalgia
Imagine this: It’s 2008, and I’m sitting next to my father at his new Acer Aspire laptop. The room echoes with the satisfying sounds of bouncing balls and shattering bricks as we take turns playing Jardinains!, each of us determined to beat the other’s high score. Those moments of friendly rivalry and shared laughter became some of my most treasured childhood memories.
Now, as an engineering student competing in the Amazon Q Build Games Challenge, I knew exactly what I wanted to bring to life. Not just any game, but that game, the one that brought my father and me closer, and showed me how the simplest ideas can create the most unforgettable experiences.
Why Jardinains? The Perfect Retro Choice
There's something beautifully pure about Jardinains! - just a ball, paddle, and colorful bricks, yet endlessly captivating. It's the kind of game anyone can learn in seconds but takes forever to master.
For this AI challenge, it was the ideal canvas - complex enough to showcase Q Developer CLI's capabilities, yet simple enough to focus on what really matters: recreating those magical gaming moments that made us fall in love with games in the first place.
v1.0.0 with Amazon Q
I kicked off this project by installing Amazon Q Developer CLI using brew install --cask amazon-q and following the setup instructions. Once everything was ready, I integrated Amazon Q with my Alacritty terminal. For my first experiment, I simply typed q chat and gave it a straightforward prompt:
"Build a CLI game using pygame like Jardinains."
To my surprise, Amazon Q delivered an impressive first draft!
The initial version already included most of the features I wanted, and I was genuinely excited by how quickly things came together. Of course, there were a few areas I wanted to tweak and improve. Let’s take a closer look at the code and the enhancements I made.
Mouse/Trackpad Control
In the first iteration, the game only supported keyboard controls. I wanted to add mouse and trackpad support for a more intuitive experience. I went back to Amazon Q, requested this feature, and it generated the correct implementation right away:
def update(self):
if self.mouse_control:
# Mouse/trackpad control
mouse_x = pygame.mouse.get_pos()[0]
self.x = mouse_x - self.width // 2
self.x = max(0, min(self.x, SCREEN_WIDTH - self.width))
else:
# Keyboard control
keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
if keys[pygame.K_LEFT] and self.x > 0:
self.x -= self.speed
if keys[pygame.K_RIGHT] and self.x < SCREEN_WIDTH - self.width:
self.x += self.speed
Bringing Back the Nostalgic Sound
A huge part of Jardinains’ charm is its classic sound effects—the satisfying clink of breaking bricks and the iconic start and end jingles. To capture that nostalgia, I downloaded the original soundtracks from this website and placed them in my project’s assets/sound/ folder.
With Amazon Q’s help, I integrated these sounds using Pygame’s mixer module and a simple SoundManager class. Now, the game plays the authentic sounds at just the right moments:
- Game Start: Plays the classic start jingle.
- Brick Break: Plays the original brick-breaking sound.
- Win or Game Over: Plays the corresponding victory or end tune.
And that’s how we completed the whole project!
References
- Official challenge page Build Classics with Amazon Q Developer CLI
- Source Code gambhirsharma/jardinains-cli
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Gambhir Sharma
Gambhir Sharma | Sciencx (2025-07-12T02:03:28+00:00) Building Jardinains using Amazon-q. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/07/12/building-jardinains-using-amazon-q/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.