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MEME NINJA — 3rd Place at Cursor Madrid Hackathon #3

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MEME NINJA — 3rd place at Cursor Madrid Hackathon #3 with Max, Dingli Ni Xu, and Felipe Basurto Barrio

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Fruit Ninja meets Twitch memes and your hand on camera. Hackathon build with computer vision, Next.js, and LibreYOLO — live demo, leaderboard, and a deployed playable game.

Fruit Ninja, Twitch memes, and your hand as the controller

At Cursor Community Madrid Hackathon #3, Dingli Ni Xu and I built MEME NINJA: a browser arcade where you slash flying emotes like fruit. The camera tracks your wrists, a saber-like trail follows your hand, and every run shuffles good memes plus red bomb emotes that cost points and lives.

Play online

The game is live at meme-ninja.dowi.es. Current record: 7,600 points (Max). Can you beat it?


Result: 3rd place

We finished third in the hackathon. The highlight was not just the ranking — it was the queue at our booth, people asking for another round, and the room laughing when someone slashed a forbidden red meme.

3rd place · Cursor Madrid Hackathon #3

Max, Dingli Ni Xu, and Felipe Basurto Barrio at the 3rd place moment
Podium moment — Max, Dingli Ni Xu, and Felipe Basurto Barrio (organizer).

Live booth demo

Our live flow was simple: I pitched the game and Dingli played right after so visitors could try it immediately. The concept clicked in seconds and people wanted rematches.

Live MEME NINJA demo at the hackathon booth
Booth demo — pitch and live gameplay.

How it works

  1. Hit Start round (60 seconds).
  2. Enable the camera (or demo mode without the backend).
  3. Move your hand — the trail follows you.
  4. Slash good memes → points and combos.
  5. Avoid red memes → lose lives and points.
  6. Your name lands on the leaderboard.

Demo privacy

Only normalized wrist coordinates travel over WebSocket; video is processed to play the game, not stored for the leaderboard.


Tech stack

PieceRole
Next.js + CanvasGame UI, trail, physics, effects
LibreYOLO (pose)Real-time wrist detection
Python + FastAPI + WebSocketsBackend receiving camera frames
7TV emotesLocal meme catalog in the repo
CursorAI-assisted development during the hackathon
Docker / CoolifyFrontend and backend deployment

Each run shuffles which memes spawn; forbidden ones get a red glow and tint so they stand out in the chaos.


End of the day

Max and Dingli Ni Xu at the end of the hackathon
Max and Dingli Ni Xu — MEME NINJA team at the close of the event.
Cursor Madrid Hackathon #3 venue atmosphere
Hackathon atmosphere — official event gallery.

Thanks

Thank you to Cursor Community Madrid for Hackathon #3 and to the organizers — Juan Mugica, Felipe Basurto Barrio, and Xuban Ceccon — for the venue, the booth support, and the push during the build.

Thank you to everyone who played at our stand — that energy is what made the project feel alive.

Links

Alder Darío Velásquez Obando

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Alder Darío Velásquez Obando

Full Stack Developer & DevOps Engineer passionate about technology, artificial intelligence and creating innovative solutions.

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