Jiggen
A browser game that can be played on your phone, tablet or PC.
Solve pre-made jigsaw puzzles or create your own!
Play it at https://jiggen.app
Gameplay and features here
Initial Prototype
What originally started as a birthday present to my girlfriend has evolved into a fully-fledged app. She enjoys solving jigsaw puzzles so I decided to make a little app for creating and solving your own jigsaw puzzles.
The initial idea for the game was to allow templates to be uploaded, from which the puzzle pieces would be extracted. Then a background image could be chosen to be paired with that template, either from a list of predefined backgrounds or one provided by the player.
I completed a little prototype that reads in a template image and splits it up into individual puzzle pieces.
I used a flood fill algorithm to discover all the pixels in each puzzle piece and then created a new texture for each piece.
Then I assigned a random colour to each piece to show that they have been separated into individual pieces.
Play on any device
After completing the first prototype I felt there was some promise, so I did a bit of research. I looked for existing jigsaw puzzle websites and found that none of them properly supported mobile devices and some of them didn't even support touch controls.
To me, this seems like a crucial feature for a puzzle game. Being able to play on your phone or tablet while on the train or during a long flight. Not to mention that it's more natural to use touch controls for this kind of game instead of a mouse.
Create your own puzzles
I wanted to provide useful customization options, but not so complicated that it would overwhelm the player. Jiggen has a screen where you just choose a template and a background, and then go right into solving the puzzle.
Images can be uploaded via your phone, or even linked from other websites. I avoid data privacy and GDPR issues by never saving these images.
They are only ever accessed from the user's browser and never actually leave the device.
Background images are also be provided by the app so you don't always have to source your own images.
