Encrypt-to-Home

Encrypt-to-Home is a hand-designed elementary school-targeted game to introduce young children to encryption!

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Inspiration

We knew that, psychologically, children are best languages best at a very young age. This includes pattern recognition, which is a large part of decryption. We implemented facilitation style-teaching, which is an effective teaching style that emphasizes ideas of exploration and analysis to develop critical thinking. These attributes help with cyber security and understanding the ideas of encryption. Ideas in our game also reinforces educational ideas, such as mathematics and logical thinking, which are key skills in cyber security and encryption. This inspired us to design a young children's game aimed to introduce children to the idea of encryption and decryption on the surface level!

What it does

This is a three-level story/exploration game. Crypto, a lost balloon has been blown away from his home. Read the encrypted sign and decode them to gain hints on how to bring him back home! This is simple, and gives feedback for children who may not pick up on the pattern. Also, this is brightly and colorfully hand-designed to appeal to children at a young age!

How we built it

We had two members focus on the JavaScript code, one member focus on design, and one member work on a little bit of both. We digitally drew all of the backgrounds, characters, and even specific details. One member used a drawing tablet to deign and put together all of the backgrounds. Another member used an 8-bit art maker to design all of the clickable details (trees, characters, signs, nature, etc.). We purposely hand-designed all of the components because we wanted to appeal to young kids through the colorful 8-bit animations and implementation of nature to create a playful environment.

Challenges we ran into

Most of our team members were not familiar with object-oriented languages, so it was difficult for us to get started and on the same page. We had to do a lot of self research and find out how to make a beautiful game. None of us has ever coded a game before, and that, initially, was a big challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of the interface in our game. We feel very accomplished that we were able to hand design every component, and this game feels like something we truly made. Additionally, we are proud to have made a game through an object-oriented language. In the beginning of the day yesterday, most of our group wouldn't have even known how to print "hello world", and within 24 hours, we were able to make a game!

What we learned

We learned a lot about JavaScript, which was something unfamiliar to all of us before. We feel like we have learned a lot about how much research can help us learn a computer language. Also, we learned a lot about efficient way children learn, and how to make games that will help children develop skills in basic encryption!

What's next for Encrypt-to-Home

MAKE MORE LEVELS! We want to make more levels and possibly implement more challenges that teach children other encryption skills beyond Caesar Cipher to appeal to children who have already mastered the basics!

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