Inspiration
The inspiration for Cosmic Brews was the overarching theme that communication goes beyond words. We explored how colors and cryptography could form a universal form of connection between intelligent species. We also drew inspiration from futuristic cafe aesthetics and focused on the role of food (an energy source) and social spaces as a way to bring communities of different species all together.
What it does
A futuristic interstellar cafe where players decode alien communication to serve at the cafe & build their dictionary for cultural communication across the galaxy.
How we built it
We first brainstormed problems to do with communication in real life, then planned a unique communication system that match the alien species theme, then worked on frontend dev including animation & visuals, gameplay system of decoding mechanics, recipe progression, and finally tested the game flow and difficulty progression (as well as UI).
Challenges we ran into
Making it so the puzzles aren't too hard, and is still understandable for people playing the game for the first time.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Alien Communication System: built multiple non-verbal communication methods using colors and glyphs. Immersive Atmosphere: created an intuitive and interactive UI that helped us learn more about css and javascript interactions. Codex Translation System: gradually build understanding instead of direct answers.
What we learned
How visual language can replace spoken language, how atmosphere dramatically affects user experience, how to balance creativity with realistic results.
What's next for Cosmic Brews
Recipes and discoveries represent cultural exchange between species across the galaxy, allowing for more interactive learning by the users, providing greater understanding to struggles that real people face everyday due to language, cultural, or other barriers.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.