Client Description

Garage2020 is working to achieve this goal by designing solutions for concrete problems experienced by children, young people, parents, and their environment. The organization does this in collaboration with various experts, and with those for whom the innovation is intended so that their perspective is central. With these innovations, they want to prevent, shorten or replace existing forms of youth care.

Children waiting for Youth Care, wait for an average of 10 months to get help. During this time, their problems can worsen very badly. They want these children to be “distracted” while waiting for the actual help.

Description of the Assignment

Youth Care children typically experience a wait time of 10 months before receiving assistance. During this period, their issues may become more severe. Garage2020 aims to alleviate this wait time by providing a game that can serve as a distraction for these children. We are working to improve upon a previous version of the game to better serve this purpose.

Game Description:

The primary objective of the game for the child is to foster social connections and receive support in dealing with difficult situations. The child will choose and customize a virtual companion animal that will provide companionship throughout the game. Additionally, the game includes a diary feature for the child to document their thoughts and experiences, which can aid in coping with stress and negative emotions.

Team Members:

(In alphabetical order)

  • Bram Knook
  • Kinlok Lau
  • Luca Pulvirenti
  • Maike Meek
  • Maikel de Werd
  • Tessa van de Langenberg

Key features of the game:

  • Pets
    • Different types of animals to choose from
    • Customizable animal colour (using colour picker)
  • Movable camera
  • Diary
    • 4 digit combination lock system for privacy
    • Expressive emotion wheel with 8 different emotions and 3 varying intensities respectively (total of 24 different emotions)
    • Locally saved to file
  • Messaging
    • Predefined message system with database integration
  • Stickers
    • Basic sticker collection system

Supported platforms: Android

How To Play:

First you choose your favourite pet, customize the colour, and choose the name to your liking. You can then use the menu drop down in the top right of the screen to navigate through various parts of the app:

Diary: Make diary entries by selecting an emotion and writing about your day. All your entries will be found in the ‘view all entries’ section of the diary.

Messaging system: Click on the paper on the table near your pet to open the messaging system. You can then select the category of your message and then choose 1 of many different predefined messages to send out to the world.

Stickers: This section is incomplete, the storing of stickers is possible however sending or receiving is not yet ready.

Installation instructions:

To run the game locally on your computer, you need first need to download the zip file. Then add the unity project from your disk through Unity Hub. Lastly, you need to run the API, this can be done through several methods. Read the readme for more information.

Here is the Google drive download link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UHLfTuyvdyJha9GkRYv4KsitF2_T1XzG/view?usp=sharing

IMPORTANT: The API needs to be deployed and the URL needs to be configured within Unity for the connection to work when you run it through this method.