Snap and Swing is a Snapchat lens game I developed over the winter break of 2025. I had never developed a Snapchat game (or any game really, other than some C# ones when I was 13). When I saw the opportunity for the Snap Lensathon on Devpost it seemed like a unique opportunity so I took the chance.
I programmed the game myself and tried to minimise AI use (other than understanding the Snap Studio docs). I did not want to overly rely on AI because I felt it was a good opportunity to brush up on TypeScript. The game was actually surprisingly challenging. The idea I had was centred on a player swinging from platform to platform using a rope. I had no experience with Snap Studio, however, and this idea was relatively difficult to achieve inside its confines. There were times in which I considered actually producing my own physics engine and circumventing the built-in one.
Ultimately, however, I settled on a system that relied upon two hinge joints which were available inside the engine: one connecting the rope to the platform and one connecting the player to the rope. The rope cylinder was drawn in after the fact using a vector pointed towards the hinge joint.
To expand this concept to swinging from floating islands I added a series of points along the bottom of the island and used a distance calculation to decide which to swing to. This calculation was weighted towards points in front of the user to keep the game moving forward. I made a few of these platforms and used pooling to achieve infinite island generation.
In other projects I would normally have begun with learning the best practices and then slowly implemented them as I found concepts that carried over. In this case, however, as I do not have much interest in game development and there was a short deadline I ended up reinventing the wheel in many instances.
I was unprepared for the amount of traction the game received. Within the first day the lens had surpassed 2 million plays on Snapchat. As of today it has reached over 20 million. I believe Snapchat is an underrated medium for reaching a large audience but I am still surprised at how popular the game was and continues to be. I ended up winning 2nd place in the 2D category of the lensathon, earning $1.5k. This was my first hackathon win and I am still proud of it.
