A narrative game about connecting with an isolated curator to explore mental health, education, and financial literacy.
Live Demo: Link
What this project does
The Creator's Garden is a browser-based narrative game built for the Sparkhub Hackhub 2025. It started as a simple story about connecting with someone who's isolated and a perfectionist, but it grew into something more.
You meet Sei (a name inspired by the kanji 生, for life), a creator, artist, who has perfected his world but closed himself off. By showing kindness and curiosity, you slowly build a bond with him. This unlocks two other areas of his sanctuary:
- The Library (Education): You explore his book collection, and he, surprisingly, is a passion teacher(just a bit), quizzing you on topics Latin.
- The Study (Financial Management): You help him understand modern-day financial struggles, unlocking simple tools that teach core concepts of budgeting, inflation, and financial independence, framed for a European context.
The whole experience is about showing how patience and understanding can build bridges and how learning can happen in unexpected, gentle ways.
The problem this project solves
The project talks the anxiety that comes from big, often overwhelming parts of life. On the mental health side, it addresses the problem of isolation and social anxiety, offering a gentle narrative that shows how patience and understanding can build bridges to even the most withdrawn people. For education and finance, it solves the 'intimidation problem.' Many people avoid these topics because they seem too complex or stressful. The game integrates learning into a story and simplifies financial concepts into interactive tools, making them accessible and a lot less scary for everyone.
How it aligns with the Social Good theme
- Mental Health & Wellness: The core narrative directly addresses themes of social anxiety, isolation, and perfectionism, showing a hopeful path toward connection.
- Education for All: The Library section provides a fun, low-pressure quiz environment to learn new things in a story-driven context.
- Poverty & Economic Management: The Study offers accessible, interactive tools for financial literacy, breaking down intimidating concepts into manageable pieces.
Tools or technologies used
- Frontend: Vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Character Art: The 3D model for Sei was created in Vroid Studio.
- Graphics & UI: UI elements and promotional art were made using Photoshop, Canva and Figma.
- Charting: The chart in the Study is powered by Chart.js.
What I Learned & Would Do Better
- Plan, Then Code: I jumped right into building as soon as the hackathon started, which was exciting but not very efficient. Next time, I'll dedicate more time upfront to map out the features and structure before writing a single line of code.
- Managing Scope Creep: The project started as a simple narrative game for mental health. When I saw the opportunity to add the education and finance sections, I took it. While I'm proud of how it turned out, adding major features on the fly was the main reason things got messy.
- A Unified Codebase is Key: My biggest takeaway is the importance of a clean structure. Because each new section was built separately, they all ended up with their own CSS and JavaScript files. This made the project feel disorganized and difficult to manage. For my next project, I'll focus on creating a more unified system with shared styles and modular scripts from the beginning.
- Budgeting Time Management: I definitely underestimated how much time the 3D character model would take. I had grand plans for more poses, detailed renders, and color grading, but I simply ran out of time. Properly budgeting for creative assets is something I'll be much more mindful of in the future.
I cannot submit without entering a yotube link, but "A live demo link (if available), such as a hosted website, app, or video walkthrough." thus I just copy a random one for the link.
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