sHOP: Why Pay When You Can Play

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Inspiration

Our team was inspired by the countless ads that promote games that promise cash rewards for their players. We feel that many of those games are extremely untrustworthy and wanted to create an option that has real industry and retail backing.

What it does

The game is a simple yet addictive scroller where the player can only jump to dodge incoming obstacles. A win is when the player reaches the byte coin at the end of the level and a loss is when an obstacle collides with the player. Every day a new level is released and everyone has 5 tries on that day to beat the game for points that start at 1000 and drop by 100 per death to 500 points. After that, the game is locked for the rest of the day. If checked the next day, it is open for 5 attempts again that start at 500 and drop all the way to 0. If 0 is hit that means the user cannot earn any points for completing the free play option. The free play option is unlocked when the user loses all 10 attempts or has completed the level. The archive contains every map from every day that has been released thus far and is playable for free play.

Also, the game incorporates elements that would entice retail partners to join such as the in-app advertisements, the ability to gain new customers, and the ability to have repeating longtime customers. This is done by allowing the user to exchange points earned from the game to gift cards from retail partners. A new exchange starts what is called a streak, where the conversion rate of points from one company is lowered the more repeated conversions in a row that the customer accumulates. The company can also gain customers by featuring promotions where their conversions are lowered for a period of time, which can eventually lead to repeat customers who want to start streaks with the new company.

How we built it

The group was able to complete the game purely on front-end development via HTML, CSS, Javascript & Figma. We have a background, player, and obstacle image that we draw for every instance that is needed and incorporate collision detection. Figma was used to simulate what the planned UI/UX would look like.

Challenges we ran into

An odd challenge that we ran into was the fact that the gameplay would vary wildly depending on the hardware it was run on. It was such a problem that on lower-end machines, the game was nearly unplayable with odd obstacle placement. However, we did our research on intervals and spacing when the clouds spawn. This created a more streamlined version of the application that runs essentially the same on every machine that it is running on.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of how well we were able to design the concept of the app via Figma. It is definitely an incredible tool that lets us visualize the final product. Even the small things like the ability to drag to return to the previous page were amazing to see.

What we learned

We learned how to create a game canvas that is focused around the x-y plane. Javascript is a tool that we have been learning and it is great to finally see what we have been learning in action. We also learned that game development can be a lot quicker than expected when everyone is focused on the same goal. Which is a great team-learning experience.

What's next for sHOP: Why Pay When You Can Play

Our goal is to create an application that runs on mobile platforms. We believe we have a solid foundation for the game, but due to time constraints were unable to make a polished product. Ultimately we want this to be a widely used app that companies can use to spread their brand and customer to use for savings.