https://devpost.com/software/infoventure
A documentary released in 2010 called "Waiting for Superman" was the basic inspiration for this game. The documentary follows a series of kids in the inner city of New York. Throughout it, the kids and their parents are desperately trying to make it into better schooling programs because of poor funding at their local public schools. We started InfoVenture out with a goal to help underprivileged kids with access to basic information that they might be deprived of due to lack of funding.
InfoVenture is an exploration/story based game where the player character goes around a village doing good deeds for the villagers. These good deeds are split into three sections: environmental awareness, financial literacy, and education. Every time the player does a good deed, they are pushed novel information about their current section.
At first we had a lot of trouble simplifying broad amounts of information in our three sections for our k-12 target audience. After a lot of research and suggestions from every team member we decided on converting our information into easily digestible facts.
One accomplishment we're particularly proud of is actually the sprites used in the game. Around half of the 62 assets used were originals made by our team members. This included the player characters walk cycle, house and other building interiors, and collectable items seen throughout the game.
3 out of the 4 of our members previously had no experience with C# and Unity and now we have enough basic knowledge to make a functional game. Learning the ins and outs of this type of game and the top of work that goes into it.
The technologies/tools used to build InfoVenture:
- Unity (Engine)
- C# (Language)
- Paint.net (Art)
- Audacity (Audio)
Our next steps definitely include increasing the amount of information in our current sections and expanding into more informative sections as well. We had concepts for a Health and wellness section where the player would learn about how to take care of themselves and responsibly exercise We also want to add a way for users to check their knowledge at the end of the experience through some kind of review.
I helped to design the individual rooms where some of the NPCs reside as well as the individual models of some of the NPCs.
I mainly worked on designing the overall structure of the game/map. I also helped with creating many of the assets as well.
I worked on the back-end & front-end, working inside of the Unity program and coding everything in C#. I also worked on the audio as well as a few assets.
I worked on the dialogue script for all 3 different sections and on sprite assets.