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User Spawn
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Choice of Decision
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Educational Content
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Shower
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Phone feed
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Dream Game Play
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The Algorithm
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Sleep Report
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Tech Stack
Play on Roblox · See live sleep stats
Inspiration
As college students, we know how easy it is to say we’ll go to bed early and then suddenly realize it’s 2 AM. The advice is usually simple: stop scrolling, dim the lights, take a relaxing shower. But knowing what to do doesn’t always make it easy to do.
The hour before bed can be a relaxing wind-down routine, and what you do during that time can affect your sleep and overall health. We wanted to gamify the typical advice given for getting better sleep. In Snooze You Choose, players go through a bedtime routine and see their choices shape their dream. In the morning, Barb the Sleep Sheep, grades their night, explains how their choices affected the dream, and suggests something to try next time.
What it does
The game starts at 10 PM in a cozy loft-style studio, with bedtime at 11 (shortened to 5 minutes in the game). Players can:
- Read a book or scroll on their phone
- Choose cherries or pizza as a late night snack
- Play a shower mini-game and brush their teeth
- Adjust the thermostat and lighting
- Watch TV and manage phone notifications
Their choices also shape the dream. For example, scrolling in bed brings out The Algorithm, a giant phone that chases the player. Leaving the main light on makes platforms flicker. A calmer routine creates a peaceful dream with smoother and easier gameplay.
In the morning, Barb grades the night from S to D. The interactive book also includes CDC sleep facts and a short question after each chapter.
How we built it
We developed the game in Roblox using Luau. We used Visual Studio Code, Rojo, and GitHub to sync and manage the team’s work.
- A server-side rules module evaluates player choices and determines their gameplay effects.
- The game includes seven bedtime activities and three dream sequences.
- Our Python FastAPI backend runs on Vultr over HTTPS and handles requests to Google Gemini and ElevenLabs, keeping API keys off the Roblox client.
- Gemini generates Barb’s morning report and phone notifications. AI text is filtered through Roblox, with scripted fallbacks if the service is unavailable.
- ElevenLabs provides Barb’s voice.
- Tiger Data with TimescaleDB stores gameplay data. A hypertable records each night, and an hourly continuous aggregate powers the live dashboard.
- The dashboard shows player habits, reading responses, grades, leaderboard data, and returning-player trends. Player IDs are stored as hashes.
Roadblocks
We had lots of ideas, but obviously very limited time, so we narrowed the scope to three dream sequences and seven bedtime activities. We also had to figure out how to build as a team and keep everyone’s work in sync. Gemini’s free-tier limits affected testing, so we added a fallback chain across models and scripted text.
Accomplishments we’re proud of
We made a full game! It was our first time building one from start to finish, and we’re proud of the complete loop from bedtime routine to dream to Barb’s morning report. We had fun modeling, lighting and designing the cozy studio loft. The dream sequences were inspired by familiar dream experiences, like suddenly falling or seeing the things you’ve been scrolling through show up in your dreams. We also got to experiment with new technologies by deploying a backend that connects Gemini and ElevenLabs, runs on Vultr, and stores gameplay data in Tiger Data to power our live stats dashboard.
What we learned
We learned how to build a server-authoritative Roblox game, connect it to a deployed backend, and use a time-series database to summarize gameplay data. We worked as a team to keep our work synced through Visual Studio Code, Rojo, and GitHub, and built the game in small iterations.
Health impact
The game draws on CDC sleep guidance, including limiting screen use before bed, dimming the lights, keeping the room cool, and avoiding heavy meals late at night. We hope it helps players notice how the hour before bed can affect their sleep and encourages them to make healthy choices.
The game doesn’t really give medical advice. Instead, it gives players a cozy, low-pressure way to see how their everyday habits can shape their sleep and overall well-being.
What’s next
We’d like to:
- Add music and more sound effects, phone notifications for example
- Make the activities more detailed, perhaps with more mini games
- Add more dream environments, visual effects, and animations
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