Aura

An autonomous mental health gamified support system that addresses the global mental health crisis

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Inspiration

Mental health challenges among young people, especially Gen Z, are increasing at alarming rates. According to research:

  • 91% of workers experience high/extreme stress.
  • 40% of Gen Z report feeling depressed or anxious multiple times per week.
  • 46% avoid seeking help due to stigma.

I wanted to create something playful yet meaningful — a space where users could explore, reflect, and grow in their wellbeing, without judgment. Gamification, visual metaphors, and AI-driven guidance felt like the perfect way to engage users while providing real value.

What it does

Aura is a serverless mental wellness application deployed on Google Cloud Run that combines AI, gamification, and personal reflection.

Explorer Map:

  • Users choose a companion (bird, duck, pig, fox, turtle.) and explore islands representing different wellbeing strategies.
  • Islands can be unlocked with Growth Points earned through journaling, chatting, or completing small tasks.
  • Each island has a unique AI-generated vision to inspire reflection crafted around your journey.
  • Once an island is unlocked, there will be AI generated stories and users can have options to choose from to continue and make their own unique story
  • Co-create your own story choosing paths that reflects your emotions, action and growth - kinda like a mini game or personality surveys where you have options to choose from

Chat Companion:

  • AI-powered chat analyses user messages, detects sentiment, calculates wellbeing score, and flags potential crises.
  • +10 Growth Points awarded per interaction.
  • Document and realise their feelings - all feelings are good feelings

Journal:

  • Private reflection space with guided prompts.
  • Encourage users to reflect on what they’re grateful for each day — research shows that practicing gratitude can significantly boost mood and overall emotional wellbeing.
  • Guided prompts with agentic architecture — empowering you to take an active role in understanding and shaping your emotions.

Wellbeing Tree:

  • Visualises user progress.
  • When fully grown, triggers a story expansion celebrating the journey.
  • Highlights their key metrics when using the app

Analytics & Growth Points:

  • Tracks trends over time, mood trends, and overall progress.
  • Visualises Growth Points earned and spent across the app.

Community Constellation

  • Anonymous constellation view showing everyone’s collective growth as glowing points.
  • Reinforces the idea that “you are not alone.”

How we built it

Frontend: React + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS

Backend: Node.js serverless APIs deployed on Google Cloud Run

AI Integration - Gemini LLM for generating:

  • Island visions
  • Narrative story expansions
  • Chat guidance (sentiment & wellbeing)
  • Journal prompts and suggested responses for journals (Agentic)

The agent follows a planner → tool → preview → execute workflow

Persistence: LocalStorage by default; optional cloud sync with Firestore

Challenges we ran into

  • Balancing gamification with meaningful content
  • Frontend animations were tricky
  • Tree structure proved to be really difficult for the growth tree and leaves
  • Serverless integration with Google Cloud Studio
  • Money spent on the Gemini API - I didn't know the token would cost as soon as I placed my billing account (I even went on testing out the nano banana and agentic architecture oof)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Successfully created a fully interactive map that can be controlled by the keyboard with unlockable islands and integrated with Gemini for the stories and generated images
  • AI integration to the project
  • Deployed to Google Cloud Run
  • Creative visual metaphors to reinforce progress and community in an intuitive and fun manner

What we learned

  • How to design gamified experiences that reinforces real world behaviour
  • Psychology behind well established principles like cognitive behavioural therapy to promote self reflection, emotional processing and cognitive restructuring
  • How to use Google Cloud Run and Google AI Studio (it's my first time using!)

What's next for Aura

  • Expanding the explorer map
  • Add mini games or wellness challenges
  • Probably community features to interact with likeminded people (as long as it does not go sideways)
  • Deeper personalisation
  • Work on enhancing the growth tree

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