Vodacom · Live-stream game

A tower defence game played through YouTube live chat

A tower defence game that runs non-stop on a YouTube live stream. Viewers attack by typing commands in the live chat, and players defend from a phone or browser.

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The brief

A Vodacom-branded game for a YouTube live stream that keeps playing with or without an audience. Viewers type commands in the chat to send robots at a Vodacom relay, and anyone can scan a QR code to defend it in the browser. Automated attackers and defenders keep each match going when nobody is playing.

What we did

A deterministic game simulation and a server that runs matches at 30 ticks a second
YouTube Live Chat ingest that turns chat messages into attacks, with per-player cooldowns
A Three.js battlefield with 22 hand-built procedural 3D models, a new map each match and Vodacom branding
An auto-balancer that tests game settings over hundreds of simulated matches
An admin dashboard for the stream link, sponsor banners, leaderboards and daily usage reports

The live-stream view, with chat commands and a scan-to-join code

Some of the 22 procedural tower and robot models

The result

Live on Firebase Hosting, with the game server on Google Cloud Run. In 500 simulated matches the defenders won 51.4% of games against a 50% target, and the median match ran about four minutes.

See all our work