Mind Over Matter

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Mind Over Matter is a python-based app made to help people take their mind off of worries. During times of stress where it isn’t feasible or possible to directly address the problem, Mind Over Matter can allow the user to take their mind off of it and focus on one of the four games in our app. These games are fun, easy to play, easy to focus on, and not reward-based so there’s no stress about time commitment.

This idea was sparked by the fact that playing Tetris has been proven to help reduce the effects of anxiety and PTSD. We thought we’d extend that idea and make an app that has four Tetris-adjacent games all in one place.

We built our app using python in the IDE Thonny. We used the Tkinter library to make pages with text and functioning buttons and the pygame plugin to run the games by making shapes, using the mouse, and taking in movement commands.

As this is our first CodeJam and being beginner coders, our biggest challenge was figuring out how to code our idea. We all have basic backgrounds in python, but getting started and figuring out which plugins/libraries to use and how to use them was a struggle. Over the course of the weekend, we really honed our python skills (specifically for the plugin Pygame and Tkinter library), as well as a little bit of HTML and CSS and general website design. We also learned how to delegate tasks and work collaboratively on one project over multiple devices.

Seeing as we are beginners, we are extremely proud to have a working product! It functions exactly how we imagined it would, and we’re very pleased that we can share it with other people via our website.

There are 3 main next steps for Mind Over Matter: developing night mode, adding more games, and making it into an IOS/android mobile app.