Inspiration
As a team, we recognised that mental health issues can come in many shapes and forms. Ranging from simple mental distress as a result of typical stressors such as work or studies to more severe mental health illnesses such as severe depression or schizophrenia.
While sometimes it is the more "severe" mental health illnesses that get the most attention, we feel that the more common, everyday mental health issues such as stress and anxiety deserve equal, if not more attention. After all, it is often the poor management of these "lower-level" mental health issues that result in more severe mental health illnesses further down the line.
We also recognised that when it comes to the management of such mental health issues, it is often very hard for the person in distress to manage the situation by themselves as it can be daunting to reach out to others due to the fear of being stigmatized or being classified as "weak" for not being able to withstand stress. Thus, we decided to make a product in order to educate people on how to identify these common signs of mental distress and to let them personally experience through the game how best to approach and interact with such people. Teaching them the skills and giving them the courage to take the first step and be the one to reach out to those around them who may be showing signs of mental distress.
What it does
Your Story seeks to educate and raise awareness on how people should interact and care for people facing varying degrees of mental distress through immersing the player in a first person Point-of-View, for them to experience interactions with people on different parts of the mental health spectrum.
How we built it
We wanted enough flexibility to customize a good interface but also wanted some form of interactivity as we were building a simple game. Hence, we decided to go with HTML, CSS and Javascript. Building the general look of the game was simple and could be done using plain HTML and CSS. The interactions such as the chats and addition of diary entries were automated using Javascript.
Challenges we ran into
Building a well fleshed out story was difficult as it required us to craft out numerous text messages and diary entries, something that was difficult with our busy schedules and limited time. Furthermore, the massive amount of content that we had to import into our game cost us a lot of time and energy.
Creating each character, giving them personality and their own personal dynamics and revealing it all through just plain text and a simple messenger icon was another big hurdle to cross on this journey to completing the game.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Creating a game that was more complex than we expected it to be and doing it within 24h.
What we learned
It is hard to accomplish a certain goal within 24h especially if one is not well versed in the subjects required such as Psychology and Programming. However, we learned that each of us has a role to play and that we all can contribute to a goal.
What's next for Your Story
The team believes that this project has a great amount of potential, and we have just scratched the surface over this 25 hour hackathon. Characters can be further expanded upon to include a greater variety of stressors, mental states and can even include examples of mentally ill people. (We only managed to cover the perspectives and scenarios of JC students as that is the demographic we are most familiar with and hence have the authority to speak, especially from personal experience) Not to mention improvements to the characterisation to bring out greater nuance and storytelling within the writing. These are issues that can be solved with time, where we collect interviews and testimonies, not to mention hone our writing ability. The team believes that this game can even be used as an educational product with some tweaks if done right.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.