Lavender Team - Stick Adventure!

Inspiration:

The theme of this hackathon questioned how to bridge the gap between communities and gaming was the natural answer: it is entertainment that many people enjoy and the anonymity our game provides would hopefully prevent stereotypes of communities and protect our users’ privacy. Our game would also provide a chance for individuality and a way to challenge what norms you grow up with.

What it does:

The game, Stick Adventure!, allows for avatars to explore a limited world containing sectors, such as a lounge, arcade, forest, beach, and more. As users interact with objects in these sectors and play minigames, they can chat in a large chat function to form new friendships with other players or strengthen existing ones.

How we built it:

We used Figma to create an interface of the demo, and Python, through CodeHS, to create a demo of how some of the features will work. We spent a lot of time brainstorming in order to draw up a list of features, and then including some of the main ones in the demo.

Challenges we ran into:

It was hard to decide what we wanted to focus on. Some of our other ideas were a volunteering app to connect older people in isolation with someone who could help, which we decided to scrap because it would have been hard for the older people to get access to technology. Eventually we settled on a community iOS multiplayer game to help connect people of all ages. We also spent a while brainstorming ideas for safety, especially between some younger people and older people. It was also tough to decide what to and what not to include in the demo, especially because we had limited time and not many people in our team knew how to code.

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

We’re proud of how the entirety of the app developed as we brainstormed. Our original idea was underwhelming and it was inspiring how it transformed into a viable project.

What we learned:

With this project, we learned how to narrow our own ideas better: what was unnecessary and what was important in creating an app. We also learned more about constructing a pitch deck and using new platforms like Figma in the workshops.

What's next for Stick Adventures:

We hope to be able to create a full demo of the game on iOS, either in Swift or XCode. Hopefully we’ll also be able to integrate it with VR to create a full experience. We hope to be able to release an early version of the app soon after.