Dots and Boxes – Hand Gesture Game

For this final project, I worked together with Floor Lieverse to recreate the classic pencil-and-paper game Dots and Boxes, but with an interactive twist. The goal of the game is to complete as many boxes as possible by placing lines between dots. When a player places the fourth line around a box, they earn a point.

Instead of only using a mouse or keyboard, we added hand gesture control. The webcam is mapped to the game screen, and the player can move their hand to select a line. A dot is shown in the middle of the player’s palm, which acts as the cursor. When the player closes their hand into a fist, this is registered as a click, and the selected line is placed on the board.

The game also includes an AI opponent. The AI uses a heuristic strategy to choose strong moves, making the game more challenging for the human player. After the player makes a move with their hand, the AI automatically places its next line.

Another feature we added is an adjustable board size. A slider allows the player to increase or decrease the size of the playing field, making the game more flexible and replayable.

This project helped me practice interactive programming, computer vision-based interaction, and game logic. It also gave me more experience with structuring code for a complete interactive application.