Climbing the STEM

Inspiration

Growing as a student, exploring STEM was something that I knew I wanted to do as I had been inspired through my parents and my older sister. However, I didn’t fully know what I wanted my career to be until exploring computer science at my high school. I enjoy creating games and I knew I wanted to create a product that would allow for young students to feel motivated and inspired by the lives of women in STEM.

What it does

More than 70% of men take up the STEM field and many women face challenges in STEM such as unfair pay, lack of opportunity, or discrimination in pursuing a dominantly male field. Climbing the STEM would creatively illustrate the lives of women who have persisted in STEM to encourage students to pursue a career in this field. Throughout the player's journey, students will learn about the lives of women who have worked and contributed to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

How we built it

I used Unity and coded in C# to create my project. Assets were illustrated with Adobe Fresco.

Challenges we ran into

Managing time was difficult as I learned how to illustrate my artwork digitally and import them into Unity. I also had difficultly with character speech and transitioning for the player, but I managed to find a solution in my code with automatically transforming the player to the next leaf.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Working on a solo project and being able to finish illustrating my assets and writing my code. I liked how the way my character animation moves and also like the idea of climbing a long plant stem to fit in with my project goal focused on Women in STEM.

What we learned

Making a game requires a lot of thought especially working solo. Also I was able to learn more about the women scientists I researched which I found very interesting.

What's next for Climbing the STEM

To further the development of this project, I would add more gameplay that would allow players to not just read about women scientists, but also visualize and experience deeper into their contributions such as through smaller mini games. I can also create more “levels” of more scientists in other fields. To enhance the visual experience, I would also improve the artwork of my game.