Inspiration
Reflecting on 2020, we were challenged with a lot of new experiences, such as online school. Hearing a lot of stories from our friends, as well as our own experiences, doing everything from home can be very distracting. Looking at a computer screen for such a long period of time can be difficult for many as well, and ultimately it's hard to maintain a consistent level of motivation. We wanted to create an application that helped to increase productivity through incentives.
What it does
Our project is a functional to-do list application that also serves as a 5v5 multiplayer game. Players create a todo list of their own, and each completed task grants "todo points" that they can allocate towards their attributes (physical attack, physical defense, special attack, special defense, speed). However, tasks that are not completed serve as a punishment by reducing todo points.
Once everyone is ready, the team of 5 will be matched up against another team of 5 with a preview of everyone's stats. Clicking "Start Game" will run the stats through our algorithm that will determine a winner based on whichever team does more damage as a whole. While the game is extremely simple, it is effective in that players aren't distracted by the game itself because they would only need to spend a few minutes on the application. Furthermore, a team-based situation also provides incentive as you don't want to be the "slacker".
How we built it
We used the Django framework, as it is our second time using it and we wanted to gain some additional practice. Therefore, the languages we used were Python for the backend, HTML and CSS for the frontend, as well as some SCSS.
Challenges we ran into
As we all worked on different parts of the app, it was a challenge linking everything together. We also wanted to add many things to the game, such as additional in-game rewards, but unfortunately didn't have enough time to implement those.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
As it is only our second hackathon, we're proud that we could create something fully functioning that connects many different parts together. We spent a good amount of time on the UI as well, so we're pretty proud of that. Finally, creating a game is something that was all outside of our comfort zone, so while our game is extremely simple, we're glad to see that it works.
What we learned
We learned that game design is hard. It's hard to create an algorithm that is truly balanced (there's probably a way to figure out in our game which stat is by far the best to invest in), and we had doubts about how our application would do if we actually released it, if people would be inclined to play it or not.
What's next for Battle To-Do
Firstly, we would look to create the registration functionality, so that player data can be generated. After that, we would look at improving the overall styling of the application. Finally, we would revisit game design - looking at how to improve the algorithm to make it more balanced, adding in-game rewards for more incentive for players to play, and looking at ways to add complexity. For example, we would look at implementing a feature where tasks that are not completed within a certain time frame leads to a reduction of todo points.
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