First year engineering students launch Goose Trials, a competitive online game platform

Goose Trials carries seven games designed specifically for university students, all wrapped in UW’s iconic goose theme. The games include tests of reaction time, pathfinding, number memory, aim training, and the notoriously challenging Tower of Hanoi. While reaction time is as simple as clicking the screen as soon as it turns green, pathfinding presents increasingly complex mazes as the gameplay progresses. The range of games is enough to keep a student entertained through an entire lecture they might be tempted to tune out. What sets Goose Trials apart is its competitive edge: players can compare their scores with others from their university and across the country. 

The platform was designed by first-year software engineering students Nate Lamarche, William Cagas, Kavir Auluck, and Mohammed Naqi, along with first-year computer engineering student Krish Vijay. With software engineering being a tight program, the five of them got to know each other pretty quickly, while also enjoying their time in the lounge areas of CMH, playing ping pong. “We all knew we wanted to start a project together; being in software and comp engineering together,” Cagas states. They all simultaneously wanted something helpful for the resume, but also something they could genuinely be proud of. The idea of Goose Trials came to them after observing students playing games in class. 

The group worked over the winter break and into the winter term. Lamarche mentioned how everyone wanted to work on a bit of everything and have a hand in every part of the project for the experience. “People gravitate towards the areas where they were interested and what they wanted to improve on,” he shared.

Throughout the process, the team had to balance perfection with the realities of launching on time.. “There is a fine line between fixing bugs and overoptimizing, and actually launching. Will [Cagas] reminded us that products launch and bugs can get fixed later,” Vijay said. Cagas echoes the sentiment, “It’s really important we thought of MVP (minimal viable product). It doesn’t have to be perfect, because it will never be perfect. We valued speed and quality. We launched and we can fix it quickly.” Auluck adds that while unexpected bugs required extra hours to resolve, the team only had to push their hard deadline back by a day or two. 

The trade-offs became apparent as soon as  their launch day but the team persevered. There was a bug that may have prevented users from logging on properly but it was resolved within 5-10 minutes. They also mention getting around the hurdles of fixing incorrect university domains. Naqi states, “There is a github of universities and their domains but for [the University of Toronto], the students have it as ‘mail.utoronto,’ not just utoronto.” Lamarche explains that the database is used so only students with valid emails at universities can log in. Vijay describes the particular challenge as a learning moment , underscoring the importance of not blindly taking databases and information. 

The team created the site with user security in mind, with a passwordless log in and authentication, in which user information is also protected. While Auluck mentioned users faking their scores on the site, the team assured that there was no access to any emails and the issue was fixed by placing a realistic maximum or minimum score limit.

Additionally, as part of the creation process,. Naqi described wanting to add personality to the site as others have pumped out similar game site projects. With that in mind, he added the special feature of geese flying over the screen as an extra entertaining touch.

To promote the game, they shared it across subreddits, Instagram stories, LinkedIn posts, and of course, through word of mouth. However, Lamarche recalls the moment they launched the game in the Software Engineering Lounge, drawing the attention of upper-year students who heard the commotion. “We were making noise and they wanted to see what was going on as well. It felt encouraging for us.” The team was able to reach over 1,000 users within the first 24 hours of the launch.

Vijay talks about how the experience is invaluable: “Learning correct protocols and working with these guys was an important experience.” Lamarche and Naqi similarly describe the experience of having upper-year students play their game and realizing that it’s not just a number on the database table. While the five may continue to add more games in the future, the project is on pause for the time being. 

To try different games that test your memory, accuracy, speed, spatial, and puzzle solving skills, try Goose Trials!