Escape From The Zaraleggians

The thumbnail which shows the main theme at a glance.

Inspiration

This year's Swamphacks theme was "Exploring the Unknown"; our team took a much more literal approach and set our project as a lost space cowboy stuck within the vast universe. We were inspired by text-based adventure and Roguelike games, and sought to create our own unique one.

What it does

Our project is a story-based game in which the player is a prisoner on a foreign planet and they are presented with choices as they read the story. Players interact with the game by typing their choices as inputs, which leads to changes in their character’s stats, enemy stats, or presents smaller details about the strange planet.

How we built it

We wrote the program using Python, where if-else statements became our best friends (and after doing it so many times, probably also our worst enemies). We include the ability for player choices to make a difference in the outcome of the story. In addition, the game includes a challenging battle system that allows them to defeat their enemies in a satisfying manner.

Challenges we ran into

Not only is this our team's first hacakaton, but for most of our team, this is the first major program they've ever written, or their first time writing in Python in general. Much of our Python or coding skillset felt very limited, and trying to allow the player to make choices without getting confused was difficult However, we didn't let those stop us!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We knowingly chose to create a difficult and lengthy program despite it being our first times competing. Althought the project seems simple enough, the implementation of the project required continuous planning to provide the right choices for the players without making it too complex. This required numerous if else statements and classes, created the various dialogues and systems for fight scenes and player stats. And we are happy to say we are proud of the end result! We hope that you will enjoy the product of our endeavors!

What we learned

In a sense, we explored our own unknowns while creating this project; much of the coding concepts and syntax used were new to us. Our confidence in our own coding skills has grown, and our ability to code in collaboration has skyrocketed. And perhaps we've learned to love coding even more than we already did

What's next for Escape From The Zaraleggians

The next step is to take this simple text-based RPG game and bring into a much bigger medium such as a 2D RPG with graphics and pixel art. Swamphacks hasn't seen the last of us! We thoroughly enjoyed this year's competition, and are keeping our eyes peeled for the next ones to come.