I just launched V2 of my project 'Who's That Pokémon?'

‘Who’s That Pokémon?’

Why I built this project

To try out new Expo features and deepen my knowledge of GraphQL and Jotai.

What the project is

A Pokémon name-guessing game that tests players’ knowledge. The game shows an image of a random Pokémon and challenges the user to guess the correct name. With an intuitive, interactive interface, it offers a fun experience for fans of the Pokémon franchise.

Technologies used

In this project I used a few technologies I already knew about but had never applied to a real project. Here are some of them:

Expo Router: I used Expo Router to streamline navigation between the game screens, taking advantage of its routing and shared layouts to create a smoother, more intuitive experience.

GraphQL: I implemented communication with a GraphQL API to fetch detailed information about the Pokémon, such as appearance, types and abilities. This approach let me get accurate, customizable data efficiently.

Jotai: I adopted the Jotai library to manage the application state in a centralized way. By sharing state between components, I kept the data in sync and simplified the game logic.

Biome: An alternative to the famous ESLint, Biome is a static code analysis tool that helps keep code quality and consistency high. I used Biome to spot and fix potential errors and improve code readability.

My impressions

Expo Router: Expo Router was a great choice for handling navigation between the game screens. Features like smooth transitions and shared layouts made things much easier.

GraphQL: GraphQL was an excellent choice for fetching and displaying specific information. With customizable queries and more structured responses, I could get the data I needed efficiently and flexibly.

Jotai: I had honestly never heard of Jotai. I had started using Recoil, and when the app was almost done I realized Recoil had been discontinued. It was never officially released, but the community was already using it. Since the goal of the project was to learn new things, I decided to use Jotai, and it was a great experience: the documentation is excellent and the library is very simple to use. Migrating from Recoil to Jotai was easy because the APIs are very similar.

Conclusion

The ‘Who’s That Pokémon?’ project was an incredible opportunity to try new technologies and sharpen my development skills. With Expo Router, GraphQL and Jotai, I was able to create an engaging, interactive game experience for Pokémon fans. I’m very happy with the result and excited to share the project with the community. I hope everyone has fun playing and testing their ability to remember Pokémon names!

Here is the link to download the app

Android: Who’s That Pokémon?

Thanks for reading! May the journey to catch all the Pokémon continue!