Creatureful

This project was made by Anjali Gali, as a final project for EDUC 510: Game-Based Learning.

Wouldn't it be great if students who are neurodivergent could socialize with their peers while simultaneously learning to code?

This is the question I wanted to answer, by leveraging a video game format to create an environment for students to create a virtual environment with virtual pets/companions that you can code custom skills into, by leveraging a video game to create a virtual pet/companion that you could code custom skills into. Students can challenge their classmates and their companions to obstacle courses of their own design, or designed by a teacher.

To develop this environment, I made use of two assets from the Unity Asset Store, for the Island Design and the Skybox design. I also incorporated the Lua Programming Language into my environment using the Moonsharp plugin. Through the Moonsharp plugin, a user is able to create simple methods that can be called within Unity, and can be used to control the environment and move objects in the environment that may help a user create simple structures when completing the minigame.

Throughout this class, we focused closely on the usage of game mechanics in popular games and gaming platforms that are used in educational, as well as recreational contexts. When beginning this project, I decided to use mechanics similar to Minecraft to promote exploration and tool-building mechanisms, making it applicable to a variety of contexts. Additionally, as I prototyped this environment, I built several wireframes to illustrate functionality that I wanted to build, such as a Sandbox mode for students to experiment in.