CalcuGator

Inspiration

During these unprecedented times where almost everyone is learning from home, it is hard for teachers and parents to keep younger kids motivated to complete their school work. With this in mind, our team decided to take it upon ourselves and implement a game that will keep students engaged while also exploring fundamental concepts taught in class.

What it does

The goal of CalcuGator is to input the correct answer of different math expressions before they reach the bottom of the screen; otherwise, their life count decreases. At the start of the game, players have the option to choose their difficulty level. The harder the level, the more equations that show up. They consist of normal math calculations including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. As the game continues and the player levels up, their progress is shown on the right until they reach the final level and win. If the life count reaches zero, the player loses. Players can either restart the game or exit after it is over.

How we built it

Our project was written in Python using the PyGame library to incorporate computer graphics and sound for a more interactive user interface.

Challenges we ran into

As the hackathon was shifted to online this year, our group faced challenges that arose from this virtual environment. It was difficult to maintain effective communication with our team members. Furthermore, our retro theme required pixelated art that was hard to find online. Due to this unfortunate lack of graphics, we decided to draw some of our own original art using an online art platform.

What we learned

We learned how to use the PyGame library to transform a simple math game into our own classic style. With the help of countless tutorials and reference pages, we were able to understand how to load different files, such as images, sounds, and gifs, to add to our game.