Mental Maze

Inspiration

We were inspired to build the project due to the importance of raising mental health awareness and diminishing any stigma towards these disorders. Very often, people may not take mental health struggles seriously or those who do struggle will feel lonely in the battle, which is why we wanted to send a message while still keeping things lighthearted and enjoyable with an interactive, user-friendly game. Not only does the game remind others that they are not alone in their mental health challenges, but the game also displays resources and information to encourage people to get the help they may need. This could even give a better understanding to those who may not recognize the seriousness of mental health issues and how it is not something that can just be pushed away or immediately solved.

What it does

The player is welcomed by the start screen and begins the game by clicking the start button. They are spawned in a maze and can use the arrow keys to move up, down, left, and right. They must find their way out, but there are multiple mobs that spawn randomly within the maze. The mobs target the player, and if the player is touched by a mob, the player loses one of their three lives. When the player dies or wins/escapes the maze, there are pop-ups of information and resources relating to the mental illness that the mob represents on that level. After all three lives are lost, the maze changes to a different formatted maze.

How we built it

Since Godot is a popular, open source game engine known for efficiently organizing and simplifying the game development process, we decided to use it despite having no experience with it beforehand. From its layout, where all the code is done within the application, to its own language, which is similar to python, Godot was a helpful platform to use. We had one member focusing on creating all the player and mobs functionality, another member focusing on user interface screens and message pop-ups, and the other member focusing on the creation of the maze and how it interacts with entities.

Challenges we ran into

We experienced many challenges that served as valuable learning experiences. These include merge conflicts, complex features with unexpected behaviors, and new layouts and information to navigate. Godot involved numerous different files that led to major merge conflicts when we pushed to our shared Github repository. However, once we adjusted to how Godot works and its influence on other files from changes in different files, we reduced the occurrence of merge conflicts and could resolve them faster. Complex features led to unexpected behaviors that were difficult to understand what caused them. It took a lot of research, debugging, testing, and more to figure out the problem. For example, implementing the mob spawning functionality involved loading the mob scene within the main scene and creating multiple spawn points and a timer to time when the next mob would spawn. The process needed a deeper understanding of Godot’s language and layout for instantiating objects and for global use of singletons, which led to numerous errors and confusion initially.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As first-time hackers with little to no experience with game development, we are very proud of learning how to use Godot quickly and being able to overcome the complex issues we faced through mentor consultations, testing, and more. More specifically, we are proud to have implemented a working maze that a player can smoothly navigate through with their keyboard keys and run from the mobs that we successfully spawned in and made compatible with the maze as well. Being able to combine all our efforts and have the final product work as intended with our integrations was also a huge accomplishment for us. We are proud that we all were on the same page with our efforts and desires and that we tried to make the best use of our time while still attending workshops and social events to have an enjoyable hackathon experience.

What we learned

We learned a variety of things, such as how the Godot game engine and game development works, how to collaborate with other team members in a time-constrained situation, and how to problem solve and conduct helpful research that leads to the most efficient outcome. Since we lacked game development experience in general, we learned about so many features, such as how to connect animations with sprites, how to implement responses for collision areas, how to customize a consistently changing user interface, and more. With this event being our first hackathon, we learned to communicate well with each other and split tasks evenly along with adapting to potential changes in our initial plan due to our time limit and technical issues.

What’s next for Mental Maze

If we had more time, we could develop this game more by adding more mobs that represent different mental illnesses such as depression, bipolar disorder, etc., which would lead to more stages that a player can experience and complete. Each stage could have certain fitting themes, unique mob attacks, and more. We could implement more animations, a way to track and display player statistics, and a smoother, more complex combat style with a way for players to kill mobs too. Overall, this was a wonderful experience that taught us many valuable lessons and will prepare us well for our future ambitions.