Case study · Popcorn Simulation Gaming 🍿
A streamer site that actually pops.
Popcorn Simulation Gaming is a cosy, family-friendly Train / Bus / Truck Sim streamer I met in my village — who puts everything his streams earn towards a local charity. I offered to build him one place fans can go for streams, updates and (soon) donations, and to make it genuinely fun to visit rather than another link-in-bio. We're in early days, but he loves the prototype.
01 — How it started
A card, and a good cause
I met the streamer in my village. We'd crossed paths a few times — always friendly, always kind — and one day we got chatting, he mentioned he was a streamer, and handed me his card. I went and watched a few streams and was genuinely taken aback by the production value and the effort he'd put in.
The part that got me, though, was this: he runs charity streams, and the money the channel earns goes to a local charity. I loved that — so I offered the same idea I'd pitch anyone worth helping: one place people can go for updates and streams, and an easy way to donate, all in a single hub.
And selfishly, I'm a big gamer myself, so this was always going to be a fun one to build — the kind of project where you slip in little easter eggs to make it stand out.
02 — The clever bit
Live, without a backend
A fan site is useless if it goes stale. The trick was keeping it current without running (or paying for) a server. The site is a static Next.js export, but a Cloudflare Worker sits in front of it and serves live YouTube data — the latest uploads and their thumbnails — from an /api route at the edge, falling through to the static assets for everything else.
The result: the recent-streams strip updates itself as the channel posts, the site stays fast and cache-friendly, and it costs nothing to run.
03 — The fun
The bits nobody asked for
The part I enjoyed most: the site is stuffed with hidden easter eggs, and every one of them rains popcorn.
The Konami code
↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A triggers a full-screen popcorn downpour.
Type “popcorn”
Spell it out anywhere on the page and it bursts.
Poke the avatar
Click the streamer's avatar five times and it spins and pops.
Leave and come back
Switch tabs and the page title heckles you until you return.
There's a hidden counter tracking how many you've found, a popcorn burst on every button click, and a little explosion intro on first load. It's all Framer Motion, and it's the kind of detail that makes a fan site feel like it was made with care rather than a template.
04 — How it's built
Same stack as this site
Next.js static export, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind v4 and Framer Motion, deployed on Cloudflare with a Worker handling the live /apidata — the same setup that runs the site you're on now. All the content lives in a single typed data file, so the schedule, socials and gear are a one-line edit.
05 — Status
Early days
We're still early. It's live and playable and he loves the prototype, but there's more to come — the donation links (Ko-fi, Patreon, PayPal) and a couple of socials still to wire up as the channel grows. The plumbing — live data, community, easter eggs — is all in.
I'm looking forward to making it a genuine standout site for him — a good person doing a good thing deserves one.
Want a site with a bit of personality?
Happy to talk through the live-data setup, the animation, or how to make something small feel genuinely fun.