A kid's game to create more inclusive communities
Click to play on: https://mabelene.github.io/taymars.adventure/index.html
We took inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the biggest issues in today’s society is the lack of representation/negative representation of black characters in the media. At a young age, our views of the world become distorted when we do not see diversity in the movies and tv shows we watch. We wanted to challenge these societal norms by ensuring our future generations are taught to love, not hate. We wanted to create a game in which young students could see themselves represented and learn to support one another.
Young students can play our game to acknowledge, understand, and learn more about situations in which discrimination can surface and how they can help support their peers who face these challenges. Our game encourages young children to learn about racial equality and social justice in a fun and interactive manner. The game helps with understanding and creating the habit of treating everyone fairly, regardless of skin colour.
We built our game using Unity and C# for game development. We made multiple scenes for each of the challenges and added button functionality using C# scripts.
The game includes a menu of helpful resources and stories for those interested in learning more about racial inequality and how this social issue has affected people around the world. This feature encourages users and their parents to better understand important events in the BLM Movement and how they can contribute to mitigating systemic injustices.
Our biggest challenge as a group was learning to use Unity. We had never used this software before and had to quickly learn about collaborating with Unity. However, after some trial and error, we successfully managed to collaborate and add our personal touches to the game!
Our greatest accomplishment was that we quickly adapted to using Unity and C#, a platform and a language we did not have prior experience with. We are proud of how we were able to create a game that represented Black people and helped students learn to recognize and combat discrimination. We enjoyed working with one another and are thankful for this experience.
As we were installing Unity, we learned that setting up new software can be difficult, but not impossible! As we started to create our game, we learned how to create new scenes, add UI elements (eg. text animation), and create C# scripts within Unity.
We hope to better engage our potential users by adding more stories and levels, as well as a points system.