🎮 Game Analytics Project

A real-time event-driven game analytics system that captures gameplay data, processes it through a backend API, and visualizes insights using Snowflake dashboards.

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🚀 Overview

This project combines a playable web-based game with a full analytics pipeline. The system captures gameplay events such as game start, score updates, coins collected, and game over, then sends them to a backend API. These events are stored in Snowflake and used to generate analytics dashboards and insights.

The goal of this project is to demonstrate how real-time event tracking and data warehousing can support data-driven game development.

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🏗️ Architecture

Player
   ↓
Game (Frontend)
   ↓
Backend API (Event Collector)
   ↓
Snowflake Data Warehouse
   ↓
Analytics Dashboard

🔹 Frontend (Game)

• Tracks player actions
• Generates structured event data
• Sends events via HTTP POST requests

🔹 Backend API

• REST endpoint: /event
• Validates event payload
• Forwards data to Snowflake
• Handles logging & error management

🔹 Snowflake

• Stores gameplay events
• Enables SQL-based analytics
• Powers dashboards and reporting

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📊 Event Schema

Example event payload:

{
  "event_id": "uuid",
  "event": "game_over",
  "player_id": "player_01",
  "session_id": "session_01",
  "score": 120,
  "coins": 15,
  "speed": 8,
  "ts": "2026-02-14T00:00:00Z"
}

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📈 Analytics Metrics

The following insights are generated:

• Total sessions
• Average score per session
• Total coins collected
• Top players by score
• Event frequency distribution
• Daily active players
• Gameplay trend analysis

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Frontend: HTML / CSS / JavaScript Backend: Node.js + Express Database/Warehouse: Snowflake Visualization: Snowflake Worksheets / Dashboard

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⚙️ How to Run Locally

1️⃣ Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/your-repo-name.git
cd your-repo-name

2️⃣ Install Dependencies

npm install

3️⃣ Setup Environment Variables

Create a .env file:

PORT=3000
SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT=your_account
SNOWFLAKE_USERNAME=your_username
SNOWFLAKE_PASSWORD=your_password
SNOWFLAKE_DATABASE=your_database
SNOWFLAKE_SCHEMA=your_schema

⚠️ Do NOT commit your .env file.

4️⃣ Start the Server

npm start

Server runs on:

http://localhost:3000

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🔌 API Endpoint

POST /event

Receives gameplay events.

Example using curl:

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/event \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"event":"game_start","player_id":"p1"}'

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🧠 Key Learnings

• Designing an event-driven architecture
• Structuring analytics-ready event schemas
• Integrating backend APIs with Snowflake
• Writing analytical SQL queries
• Building dashboards for actionable insights

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🌟 Future Improvements

• Real-time streaming ingestion
• Player retention analysis
• Advanced cohort analysis
• Leaderboard system
• Cloud deployment (AWS / Vercel)

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📜 License

This project was built for educational and hackathon purposes.

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