(un)stable

This dating simulation game educates young girls on setting and respecting personal boundaries in relationships. We empower players to understand, establish, and maintain healthy relationships.

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Inspiration 💡

1 in 3 college women say they've been in an abusive dating relationship, and over half of all college students (57%) say it's difficult to identify dating abuse.

With the plight of modern dating, situationships, and unhealthy relationships, we wonder why society has failed young girls in teaching them the essential skills needed to establish personal boundaries, protect their own emotions, and support those of others. From a young age, the social signalling towards girls has led them to be unassertive with their boundaries, sacrifice their core values under the pressure of others, and often walk into toxic situations. Knowing how to identify emotionally abusive behaviour, and being able to remove yourself from those situations as quickly as possible is an increasingly important skill. With many abusive hehaviours that have been historically normalized now coming to light, it is more urgent now than ever to undermine the subtle dangerous undertones in teaching young girls how to navigate social situations.

We wanted to create something that helps girls explore the skills and tools needed to become socially literate within a safe and fun environment.

What it does 🎮

un(stable) is a dating and friendship simulation game where the player meets and interacts with a variety of characters, and is challenged to protect their own mental health while developing those relationships in a healthy way. It helps players learn how to identify and call out behaviours such as gaslighting, breaching boundaries, and unethical actions.

How we built it 🛠

This project was coded in Python with the use of PyGame. Storyboarding, design, and presentation used a combination of Figma and Canva.

Challenges we ran into 🧗‍♂️

It was a lot of team members' first time working on collaborative coding projects, sharing across Git and ensuring consistency across the project was a challenge we had to overcome. Additionally, after attending a workshop on game development in PyGame, we decided to implement this set of modules for our project. As it was our first time using PyGame, we came across many hurdles, one issue being implementing a profile page accessible at any point in the game, without disrupting the storyline.

Accomplishments that we're proud of 🏆

Python is a new language for us! It was rewarding to have become familiar with a new programming language in just a day. In addition, seeing our hopes of creating a game that empowers women and girls come to fruition from ideation to final product is incredibly exciting. On top of that, the design and UI of the project looked even better than we envisioned.

What we learned 👩‍💻

During this project, we tried many things for the first time:

  • PyGame
  • Python
  • Github
  • Visual novel design and storyboarding

What's next for (un)stable 🎯

(un)stable has lots of potential for the future, by developing

  • More customization features to make the experience more engaging and interactive
  • Building on top of current accessibility features to make it playable for more people
  • Extend the storyline into more depth for more immersive learning
  • Increase the scope of learning and issues that (un)stable targets

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