Can a phone tell where a sugar packet landed?

Pocket Cornhole started in a bar, when I noticed my phone on its kickstand looked a lot like a cornhole board. The idea was simple. Put a phone on the table, toss a sugar packet at it, and let the phone keep score. The phone is the board, and the packet is the bag.

The game is easy to picture. The hard part is getting the phone to notice. It needs to know that a packet landed, where it came to rest, and whether it slid off the edge.

The problem

Phone screens are designed to read fingers. A paper packet full of sugar is not a finger, so the first question had nothing to do with game design. Could the phone feel the packet at all?

What worked

Wrapping the packet in foil. With foil around it, the phone reads the landing through the touchscreen, including where the packet stops and whether it slides away.

How I tested it

Before building any of the game, I built bare test screens that did nothing except report what they detected. No scoring, no sound, no design. Rough tools made it quick to try one idea after another, and they kept me focused on the one question that mattered.

I think that's the right order for most ideas. Prove the riskiest part with the roughest tool you can, then make it nice.

Try it

Pocket Cornhole runs in the browser, so anyone can open it on a phone. Play it or read the code.