Live Life Lucky

Inspiration

For our project, we were inspired by the classic board game: The Game of Life. Our goal was to reconstruct the board game for an online experience, with some differences. Our game has the same layout and gameplay, but it contains different cards and spaces.

What it does

Our game is played with both the console and the graphical output. The console is used to dictate gameplay, while the graphical output displays the board, spinner, and bonus cards each turn. It includes an animation for the player's steps moving forward and spinner. Our game allows the user to go through an entire game and even save their data in a leaderboard for the next time they play. The instructions are very straightforward and only number or letter input is required to play. Essentially, Live Life Lucky allows anyone to virtually play the Game of Life, anytime and anywhere.

How we built it

To develop the game, we programmed in Python on Repl.it because we were both pretty familiar with the language. Initially, we started by building the gameplay in the console, but with some extra time, we added the graphical features. We divided the components between us and programmed them while on a Google Meet, so that we could easily communicate and ask questions.

Challenges we ran into

During the hackathon, we did face a couple challenges, especially with implementing the graphical components. For one thing, the spinner was quite difficult to construct because of its unique decagonal shape and arrow animation. Instead of trying to make the background spin, we ended up adding an arrow to show where the spinner was landing. With the help of prior knowledge and some online references, we were able to craft a working spinner for each turn. Additionally, in the original Game of Life, players get the opportunity to select from different paths mid-game, such as if they want to go to college or take a "risky" path. However, animating the player moving through the path was simpler with only one path. After trying multiple possible solutions, we settled on simply awarding the player additional steps if they chose the shorter path. This way, the player's life milestones would still be in-sync, no matter which path they chose.

Accomplishments & What We Learned

While creating this project, we learned many new skills. For instance, we learned a lot about Python Turtles and how to draw with them. On top of that, we figured out how to go through all of the life events and store tons of variables necessary to each step of the game. Overall, we were able to significantly improve our Python and problem-solving skills.

What's next for Live Life Lucky

While we were able to finish programming the entire game, there are definitely some things we didn't have enough time to add. For example, we would want to make the dialogue also graphical so that it would be easier to see everything at once. Additionally, we would want to make the game slightly longer and include more events so that the user can go through more cards and have more choices. Furthermore, for some of the graphical components, we utilized many separate Python turtles to simultaneously draw things, but it would be much more efficient for us to figure out how to only use one turtle in the future.

Built With

• python
• repl.it