What's the True Scoop?

Inspiration

The MCIT course directory is amazingly detailed, but there's so much information that nobody can absorb it all at once. We wanted to make a game that was fun and helped you get to know your classmates?

Our inspiration came from two places: classic retro arcade games (Space Invaders, Pac-Man) and a fictional mascot we created, Root, the ENIAC Mouser. Root is the great-great-grandkitten of the cat that supposedly chased mice out of the original ENIAC machine right here at Penn.

What It Does

Similar to the classic iOS game Scoops, players control a character at the bottom of the screen, moving side-to-side to catch falling ice cream scoops. Each scoop contains a fact about a classmate (whose pixel-art sprite appears on screen). Catch the true facts to build your cone and score points; catch false ones and you lose a life.

Game mechanics:

🍦 Ice Cream Scoop — correct facts about your classmates
🍒 Cherry — restores health
🌶️ Pepper — instant game over

Challenges We Faced

Balancing education with fun. Our first prototype was an AI-powered retro chat sim which leaned too hard into the education component, but felt like a job. So we went back to the drawing board on game mechanics and found a classic arcarde game feel.

Asset creation was harder than coding. Getting the pixel-art ice cream scoops, Root the detective cat, and consistent visual style took more iteration than the TypeScript.

Scope management. We had grand ideas (multiplayer, leaderboards, procedural difficulty) but scoped down to a polished single-player experience.