JANK began with a simple idea: a quick word game where knowing language and culture is part of the fun. Players have two minutes. That makes a round easy to fit between classes, before a meeting or while waiting on a friend.
Our challenge now is less about proving we can ship software and more about learning whether people want to play again tomorrow. We're working through the less glamorous questions: what makes a first session welcoming, where does someone get stuck, and what makes a win worth sharing?
We also want to test school-versus-school challenges without assuming that a campus label by itself creates a community. A competition has to be fun, fair and simple to enter.
This series will document decisions, misses, changes and measurements as we make them. We're building in public because the process is useful to other creators, and because the players who help shape a game deserve to see what happens next.
Disclosure: JANK is a first-party project associated with the HBCU.news team. This is a development journal, not independent product coverage.