STAR

Simulate The Aftergrad Reality

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Inspiration and About the Project

We were inspired by the Security Benefit sponsor track and worked to create a fun and interactive game that simulates life after you graduate with real world events. Our game plays like a 'choose your own adventure' game where you balance your money, relationships, and most importantly your beloved cat, Mr Tickles. Every step of the game has you making difficult decisions that could have lasting consequences on your simulated life so choose wisely...

How we built it

We used flask to connect a python back-end running Google Gemini API to a HTML/JavaScript website that acts as the UI for our simulator. We used Google Gemini API to generate unique scenarios based on the players past choices which makes every experience unique.

Challenges we ran into

The Gemini Model we used was unexpectedly deterministic leading to repeat events in different simulations. We overcame this by adding some 'seeded' events of our own that happen at random to spice up the event pool and drive the simulator in a unique direction.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of how fun the game we made actually is. We spent a good hour or two just playing the simulator in downtime and had a great time seeing all the crazy scenarios we could get ourselves into.

What we learned

We learned how to create a story telling game and how to leverage generative AI for creative and unique storytelling.

What's next for STAR

We have a lot of ideas for where this could go and we didn't have the time to implement them all some things we considered were:

  • story endings based on player status (i.e. wealth, happiness)
  • a viewable map of the path you took like a tree graph
  • more seeded events to combat the repeating of similar situations
  • ending overview of your simulated life with major events and stats
  • milestones/achievements to encourage exploring different paths
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