Overview
Party Game Voting is a small web app for groups who want a faster way to decide what to play together. Instead of asking everyone to rank a long list at once, the app presents two games at a time and lets the user pick a winner or record a draw. Those pairwise votes update the ratings behind the scenes and build a live ranking for the group.
That makes the interaction lightweight for users while still producing a useful overall ordering.
The problem it solves
Choosing what to play in a group gets noisy quickly. Group chat suggestions are hard to compare, full-list rankings are tedious, and simple polls do not work well when there are lots of options.
This project explores a better interaction model:
- keep each decision small
- compare options directly
- accumulate enough votes to form a meaningful ranking
- show the leaderboard updating as the session progresses
Technical details
The app is built with Next.js, React, and TypeScript, with a MySQL database behind the API routes.
The current version uses a straightforward fixed rating adjustment model to keep the interaction simple and transparent:
- winner:
+30 - loser:
-30 - draw: no rating change
On the client side, the browser stores evaluated matchups and a capped vote counter locally. That helps avoid repeating the same comparisons too often and keeps a single browser session from voting indefinitely.