Walking Within Game

Inspiration

I've always loved games as a kid until now. But games itself have invariably been regarded as a mere leisure activity with no apparent benefit. However, I hope to show how games may be educative and informative to the public and instead overcome that lingering belief. As such, this may appeal to more ages as well. This is why I chose to a game rather than creating a website or application. While it may not bring as much direct impact as the other methods, I hope to do so through bringing attention and awareness as well as educating others on the issue via my game.

In regards to the overall idea of the game, I was heavily inspired by my current living situation in the country I reside in, Vietnam. Having lived here for years, and seeing the many online posts on how chaotic and dangerous it is to walk around Vietnam, I realized it is a prolonging problem that is constantly highlighted yet never solved. Therefore, I hope to educate others more on the ideas of walkability and promote and bring awareness on the various benefits it carries as well as the risks that are involved with not having a walkable community. I hope to bring more awareness to help my Vietnamese community as well as indirectly also bringing awareness to other communities.

What it does

I have created an RPG revolving around road safety and the promotion of walkable communities. You will take the role of a student and navigate your way home whilst avoiding vehicular obstacles and encountering some NPCs. There is also a quiz where one can learn new things or even test their knowledge to see how aware they are of such issues.

How we built it

I used Unity to develop my game and Visual Studio to do the coding. Since I am a beginner at code with no experience, I followed a YouTube tutorial (https://youtu.be/b8YUfee_pzc?si=8epfKU-hvUMqtILR) for basically all of the RPG functions and features. However, despite following it, I added my own twist to it for most of the time so that it aligns with the theme I am aiming for. As such, it allows me to learn the code and how it synthesizes together to perform a function in the game whilst also allowing me to input my own creative decisions that relate to my own theme. For the designs such as the maps and tiles, I got it from the Unity Asset Store for free. Regarding the character designs, it was made by me with some help from my designer friends.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge I faced was my inexperience in coding. When faced with issues regarding my code and having certain things not work at all, I often struggled with figuring out what to do. Furthermore, actually converting my ideas to life was something I struggled with as well due to my inexperience in coding and actually trying to figure out what functions do what.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The main accomplishment I am super proud of is the fact I was able to create a game all by myself. Even though most of it was due to the fact I followed a tutorial, which in a way may diminish the originality in the functionality of my game, I still added my own twist to it to the point where it essentially looks like my own game which I am super proud of. I am also proud to the various things I learnt such as for loops and public and private variables, etc...

What we learned

Well, this only made me realize further that game development or the development of any application or software is not so easy as it may sound. There are many layers to game development that need to be accounted for and doing it all by yourself is something that is definitely not ideal. I've realized it is no wonder companies hire all of these roles in their departments.

Furthermore, I have also learnt several features of C# which is the main language used in Unity and learnt some valuable information about walkability and its major benefits and statistics as well.

What's next for Walking Within Game

Since I am only a beginner, I don't know what the future holds for this game and whether or not I am capable of achieving such complexities. However, I am sure that I want to add more variability to the game so that players can connect more towards it. At the moment, there's really only walking, so I would like to add more tasks so that it feels more immersive and relatable. I also hope to make it more informative whilst also keeping the fun aspect of the game.

It is also only available on the Unity Play website where I published it, so I would like to publish it via a different domain so that it reaches a wider audience. This could also be achieved with creating a website and/or social media accounts to market it and showcase it off to online users.