About the project

Time Trial Cards is an educational game that merges historical learning and competitive gameplay. The concept is simple: place each card representing an event, invention, or famous figure in the correct position on a timeline.

Game mechanics

The gameplay is based on a point system focused on speed and accuracy:

• Sort cards on a precise timeline
• Progress through the ages from Prehistory to the present day
• Accumulate points to unlock new levels and boosters
• Cover school curriculum from elementary to high school and beyond

Educational content

The game offers more than 500 cards classified according to several criteria:

• Historical categories: Art, Religions, Sports and Games, Politics and Social Events, Science and Innovations, Civilizations
• Specific historical periods
• Adapted school levels (elementary to high school)
• Languages: French and English

School+ Edition

A specialized version for teachers allowing to:

• Prepare customized game configurations
• Select periods and categories
• Choose game modes (Left/Right or Timeline)
• Adapt difficulty and game duration
• Manage boosters and language options

My freelance involvement

I joined the project mid-production to strengthen development on gameplay, UI/UX, data, and stabilization topics. My work integrated pragmatically into an existing Unity architecture already in production.

Gameplay and feature development

Development and evolution of features within the existing codebase, with pragmatic integration into the established architecture:

• Work on FR/EN localization, tutorials, Training mode, and the game economy
• Fixing blocking bugs and improving overall mobile robustness
• UI/UX improvements to enhance the player experience

Technical architecture and performance

Partial refactoring of the game’s technical architecture:

• Unified persistence: unification of save mechanisms and migration to JSON, with backward compatibility for legacy data
• Targeted refactoring: breaking down monolithic components into modular services to improve maintainability
• Performance optimizations: elimination of expensive operations in render loops and strategic caching of critical references

Data pipeline

Setup and evolution of the data pipeline via Google Sheets:

• Data validation and parsing of new fields
• Support for business filters for educational content
• Integration with the game’s card and level system

Internal tools and quality

Development of internal tools to facilitate validation, debugging, and quality tracking:

• In-game bug reporting system
• Data and level control tools
• Improved validation and debugging workflows

Android deployment

Android build management and test version deployment:

• Builds via Google Play Console with versioning tracking
• Release flow preparation and test version deployment