Can-alien

Marlin entering the Earth's orbit
Title screen
Marlin going through his todo list
Marlin getting ready for winter
Marlin trying maple syrup
Marlin attending a hockey game
Marlin leaving Earth
Credits screen

Inspiration

Can-alien is a small game developed for CalgaryHacks 2021, in which we received a prompt to create a Canada-themed video game. Based on our own knowledge of living in Canada (and some of the less-than-true Canadian stereotypes), we wanted to explore the Canadian experience from the perspective of someone visiting for the first time.

What it does

Can-alien tells the story of Marlin the Martian as he visits Canada for the first time. The player aids him as he works through his itinerary. Help Marlin have the best Canadian vacation ever!

How we built it

Our group of five built Can-alien in Processing, using git to version control and support our collaboration. Some sprites and backgrounds were hand-created in Piskel and Adobe Photoshop, while other free-to-use assets were sourced from the internet. All assets were credited in our readme file.

Challenges we ran into

Having competed in a prior Hackathon, our team was familiar with working within a time constraint. However, we struggled with our inspiration for quite a few hours, leaving us with less than 14 hours to implement our vision.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of what we managed to accomplish in such a short amount of time! Given only 14 hours to complete the game, including time for sleep, we are surprised that we managed to complete a playable prototype.

What we learned

Having experienced analysis paralysis first hand during this hackathon, we learned a lot about the ideation and design process. Next time, we would dedicate more time to prototyping initial ideas in order to gain a better understanding of what might be required. Exploring the strongest ideas more thoroughly before committing to one can also prevent issues with selecting an idea and realizing at a later time that it is less feasible than other options

What's next for Can-alien

In the future, we’d like to revisit Marlin’s Canadian adventure. There is definitely more room for character development and we’d like to improve the cohesiveness of the game. We’d also like to explore more aspects of Canadian culture, like skiing or clearing the ice off your car in the mornings. Perhaps when Marlin returns, he’ll have a whole new todo list!