Days of Pain

'Days of Pain' is a short simulation game that allows users to balance 3 different aspects of university life in a sustainable manner.

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Inspiration

We wanted to make a simulation game that would simulate (though unrealistically) the experiences of a student in university. Our game was inspired by The Sims especially the need-based mechanism, but the game was more in the context of the student life.

What it does

Our game is intended to give users the chance of making decisions that would ultimately affect their needs to maintain a healthy wellbeing and successful life. We hope the takeaway is that the journey to true balance in life is possible and achievable, but still very difficult no matter who you are.

How we built it

We used HTML, CSS, Javascript, Bootstrap, and an API to generate movie suggestions. We also incorporated some original artwork (excluding the food pictures).

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge that we encountered was trying to develop a game. For all of us, developing a game was either new or not practiced much which allowed us to grow as more well-rounded coders. We also learnt to better predict the endless amounts of possibilities in games and to address as many paths as we could within a limited amount of time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of our time management. We were able to streamline our project by doing research on Bootstrap which allowed us more time to focus on the visual interface. Of course, the features of the game are our biggest pride because we focused a lot of time and energy on perfecting every single fundamental part of the game first and painstakingly tested each one.

What we learned

We learned that making games entails a lot of creative and out-of-the-box thinking. We were almost overwhelmed by the idea of endless possibilities and how to best tie them into the game without leaving holes that we would not have encountered had it not been for the planning and testing phase. We also learned to collaborate and divide work efficiently to harmoniously accomplish so much of the project early on.

What's next for Days of Pain

We wish to expand our game to further include more experiences, choices, and pathways that are underrepresented within our game. We hope to better represent the complexity of the student university life that goes beyond school and studying, and emphasize more the need to prioritize wellbeing. We hope to include more characters and more unexpected situations that could arise from within the game to mimic the unpredictability of life.

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