Word Invaders

Inspiration

Our inspiration came from the challenge of gamifying education. Education is being transformed by tech-savvy educators for tech-savvy students. With the demands of online learning post-pandemic, and the quick pace at which technology advances, test preparation has yet to catch up. Our game changes that. Based off the original arcade game Space Invaders (1978), our game combines SAT vocabulary with fast gameplay and exciting music, creating the sensation of achievement as players move through each level.

What it does

Players will find a sentence at the top of their screen, along with an underlined word. Example: It is imperative to study everyday. Each invader will come along with a seemingly similar word (ex. "optional," "necessary", "trivial," and "controversial"). You must find the invaders with the incorrect definitions and destroy them.

How we built it

We used Domain.com to host our website and Python for our game.

Challenges we ran into

Issues with website hosting: We had planned to use html and css to build our website from scratch, but decided to use a host instead for our backend. We initially tried using firebase but ran across issues involving bringing the code for our game into the website. We settled on using domain.com to host our website.
Regarding the game, we ran across issues trying to run the game, with being unable to do so on repl.it. We switched over to visual studio code which ran much better, and also found an issue in running our game stemmed from the sound which was removed for now.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of taking on challenges in such a short time. Melissa used her html and css skills, and learned to use firebase and domain.com to host our website, and worked alongside our mentor, Google's Andrea. Faith took on designing our game using flow charts, began the final presentation of our game, as well as aided Tammy with most of the coding. Tammy was the main developer of the game, using python to code a game for the first time with it. Claudia came up with the idea of the game, designed a first draft of the game, helped design the game using flow charts, and finished the presentations to be submitted for the game.

What we learned

We learned how to use PyGame, Git, Repl, and learned about Firebase from our mentor Andrea :) We also learned to use azure whiteboard. From Andrea, we learned how to create a minimum viable product, and to focus on solving the problem, the bringing the pieces together.