SocialMaxxing

Even aliens have to learn manners.

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Inspiration

COVID and generative AI didn't just disrupt school schedules. They interrupted something far more essential: the social education that only comes from being around other people. The years children spend learning how to introduce themselves, disagree without fighting, share, and read a room were never taught through textbooks. They were learned through interaction between adults and children, between friends and family. Those were years that quietly slipped away. Social Maxxing was built out of grief for that lost time, and a genuine desire to give kids back what they missed.

What it does

SocialMaxxing is a social etiquette game built in Unity that teaches children how to navigate real-world interactions through an otherworldly storyline and choice-based gameplay.

The player is an alien who has just landed on Earth. To avoid being exposed, they must learn to blend in with the humans around them. Across three settings (school, cafe, and home), they encounter characters and must choose how to respond: how to introduce themselves, how to handle disagreement, how to share. Every choice gets instant feedback (green for respectful responses, red for harmful ones) with the progress bar. The twist? You'll just have to play to find out!

Watch our demo here

How we built it

We built SocialMaxxing entirely in Unity, combining custom C# scripts with Unity's animation and UI systems to create an interactive, choice-based experience. The game uses ShaderLab and HLSL for visual styling, giving it the hand-drawn, storybook aesthetic you see throughout.

Unity assets we utilized: School (setting), Start scene map

UI Images: hand-drawn by the team and digitally refined (thanks, gpt)

Challenges we ran into

  • Limited prior experience with Unity
  • Setting up the physics system, camera, UI, and scripting took longer than expected
  • Task distribution between teammates on a single codebase required constant communication
  • Time management across the hackathon weekend

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a story-based game in Unity as a team
  • Created an interactive experience designed to meaningfully impact how children learn social skills

What we learned

  • How to build and navigate a full game engine
  • How to collaborate effectively as a team on a single codebase
  • Things rarely go according to plan, and learning to adapt is half the work
  • Making a story feel coherent and intentional is harder than it looks.

What's next for SocialMaxxing

  • Expand the game with more scenes and settings
  • Add body language indicators to give players more nuanced social cues
  • Introduce audio with emphasized shifts in tone to reflect how delivery matters in real conversations
  • Build a system that allows for more personalized and varied interactions over time
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