README.md

Doodle Brawl

Play it here!

_{Due to Gemini API costs, the backend server may not be up. Please consider hosting your own instance with the instructions below.}

Description

Screenshots

Tech Stack

• Frontend
  • React
  • Vite
• Backend
  • Python
  • Flask
  • Google Gemini

How to Host

• Step 1: Obtain your Google Gemini API key

  • Follow these instructions to obtain your API key. It is free for personal use, with a modest daily limit (at the time of writing).
  • Copy env-example.txt and name it .env. Then paste your API key into this file.

• Step 2: Start frontend

  • Requires Node.js (tested on v22)
  • Run npm install inside of the ./frontend/ directory.
  • Run npm run dev to start a development server, this will open a local web server.
  • (Optional) build a production-ready website with npm run build and host yourself.

• Step 3: Start backend

  • Requires Python (tested on v3.14) and uv
  • Run uv sync inside of the ./backend/ directory
  • Inside of ./backend, run source .venv/bin/activate
  • Inside of ./backend, run python app.py, this will open a local web server.

Steps 2 and 3 can be done in either order, the browser client will continually try to connect to the server until it is successful.

Authors

• Connor Fair
• Jon Rutan
• Trevor Corcoran

Made for the VCU 24 hour Hackathon - January 30th-31st 2026