About CYDI
CYDI - short for “Can You Draw It?” - is a free drawing accuracy game. You are shown a shape for a couple of seconds, the canvas is cleared, and you redraw it from memory; the game then measures how close your line came and shows you where it went. There is nothing to guess and nobody to guess for you. How to play explains the whole thing.
Who makes it
CYDI is made by Lior Rubinovich together with his daughter. It is a two-person project rather than a studio one. Guest artist packs are drawn by invited artists, who are credited by name inside the game.
What is in it
The Shape Challenge holds 276 shapes across 12 categories - geometric forms, symbols, the alphabet, animals, nature, food, sport, transport, household objects, calligraphy, fantasy and universal signs. Around it there is a Daily Challenge with a global leaderboard, a collectible Mega album, and two ways to play with other people: pass-and-play on one phone, and online rooms of up to 8 players.
Every shape is drawn by code rather than stored as a picture. A shape is a small generator function that builds its outline from arcs, curves and polar geometry at whatever size the canvas happens to be, which is why the target is crisp on a phone and on a desktop, and why the same definition can be used to score a drawing and to illustrate a page.
How it is built
- The game is React and TypeScript, drawn on an HTML canvas.
- The site and its online features run on Cloudflare Workers, with Durable Objects behind the Daily Challenge leaderboard and each Play Together room.
- The Android app is the same code wrapped with Capacitor - not a separate build of the game.
- Sounds are synthesised in the browser at the moment they play, using the Web Audio API. There are no audio files in CYDI at all.
- The interface uses your system's own fonts and standard emoji glyphs rather than bundled font or icon artwork. The core interface and the game's own visuals are original CSS, SVG and canvas work made for this project; artwork in guest artist packs is made by the artists themselves and credited to them separately inside the game.
How it treats you
- No account. There is no sign-up, no login and no password. You can play the entire game without telling it anything about yourself.
- Your progress is yours, and it is local. Scores, unlocks and coins are stored in your own browser or app storage, not on a server. That also means clearing your browser data clears them, which is why the game has a backup-and-transfer code you can move yourself.
- Your drawings stay on your device in single-player and in the Daily Challenge, where only the score is submitted. The one exception is Play Together, where scoring happens on the server so that every player in a room is judged identically.
- No ads on the web. The website loads no advertising SDK and makes no ad requests. The Android app offers optional rewarded videos you can always decline.
- The privacy policy sets all of this out in detail, including what the Android app does differently.
Where to play it
CYDI runs in any modern browser at playcydi.com - nothing to install and nothing to sign up for. There is also an Android app on Google Play. The single-player game works offline in the app; the features that are online by nature - Play Together rooms, the Daily Challenge leaderboard and share links - still need a connection.
CYDI is in active development, and the game changes often. If something is broken or you have an idea for it, get in touch - it is a small project and messages are read by the people who make it.