0-Hint

Inspiration

In light of Bell Lets Talk Day on January 26th, the conversation surrounding mental illness and its stigmatization is buzzing. Over $6,000,000 was raised by Bell in their mental health initiative demonstrating an obvious need to discuss mental illness, which has our team inspired to help contribute to the conversation. According to the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 1 in 5 Canadians experiences a mental health problem in any given year. Hint does not implicitly say that this is a game about mental health, because mental illness doesn’t look the same on every person. Hint also shows that while you might believe you are the only one receiving help, just by being present, listening, and talking, the other person might receive help as well.

What it does

To help break the stigma of mental illness, you need to know what it looks like and understand what its effects. Is mental illness distinguishable? Hint is a game that allows the user to aid the computer through its symptoms without even realizing it. The player must conquer a series of puzzles with the guidance of the computer, when in fact the computer itself is facing difficulties with mental illness that you must help

How I built it

This game was built using Unity, C# and Photoshop.

Challenges I ran into

Our greatest challenge was actually coming up with an idea. For the first few hours of the hackathon, we pondered how we could build something to make a positive contribution in the efforts of starting the conversation of mental health. Difficulty was also had with integrating rope physics in one the game levels.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Getting all aspects of the design such as the pulleys and bricks of the house fully functional.

What I learned

The past 36 hours were filled with learning experiences. Some notable events were learning that it is hard to make your game work exactly as you had imagined it to, and that changes will likely need to be made along the way. We also took a field trip to Queen’s University’s Peer Support Centre, where we were able to discuss behaviours and symptoms of mental illness with experts, who gave us an insight and led us to incorporate these into our game.