Recycle Me

Title Screen (Cut Off For 3:2 Ratio)
Throwing A Recyclable
Game Over Screen
Controls Menu
Pause Menu

Inspiration

I work as a barista and my store has a three-compartment garbage: recycling, compost, and waste. Every day I see people struggle with what goes where, a decision that seems like everyone should be confident in (I wasn't before making this game). The goal of my game, Recycle Me! is not only to make people more aware of what is recyclable and compostable but also to get them in the habit of throwing them in the right bins.

What it does

It is a video game that teaches the player where to throw compost recycling and trash! I intentionally made the game fast paced because I feel like fast-paced association aids in a person’s recollection when they're not under the pressure of getting a high score. The game has a loop, with an increasing difficulty the further they get, random number generation for replayability, and a scoring system.

How I built it

I built the project in Unity, I imported Unities StarterAssets for a third person controller to get a baseline. I imported a cute simple small character and rigged it to fit the StarterAssets one. I then built my own stage using a city assets and a floating island asset. I built the bins using 3D flattened out cube shapes with their own collisionshapes, materials, etc. I also included a feature to make the lids close slowly every x amount of seconds, where x is based on a random value from 10-40. I created a playercontrollerextended script to handle more player controls, I created a characterheadcollision script to handle items crushing the player. One of my most robust scripts is the PickupObject script which handles all the logic for picking up, throwing, projecting trajectory of items. I created a killplane to destroy objects that fall off the map. I designed all of the UI for my game, including a credits and controls screen, title screen, all the buttons, etc. I also had to implement many other prefabs and scripts.

Challenges I ran into

The main challenge would have to be managing the time as a solo developer on a 24 hour hackathon. This was my first Hackathon and I was not sure what to expect, if I could even accomplish anything. I ended up blowing through my expectations and being highly productive. But the biggest challenge was having to create menus, scenes, and set up prefabs by myself. A lot of game development is super time consuming, and it can be extremely stressful working on it alone.

Accomplishments that I am proud of

I am really proud of myself for being able to complete a fun engaging game with a good social cause in 24 hours. Coming into this Hackathon, I was challenging myself to see if I could do it, and to have done it AND be proud of it is all I really wanted.

What I learned

I learned that I am capable of more than I expected when it comes to hackathons. I had no idea that I could lock in and code for 16 hours straight and 8 hours on and off without going insane.

What's next for Recycle Me

I plan on pushing more updates in the future, it is a really fun game and great concept and I am already thinking on future potential expansions for the game. I want to add more items from each category and implement a more robust complex algorithm for the difficulty curve.