Concept
A balloon inflation game that assesses risk-taking abilities through a series of 8 rounds. The one-player game starts with a small balloon to be pumped as many times as they wish. The more you inflate, the more money you earn. At each point, you may bank the sum earned and move to the next balloon. However, if the balloon is pumped too much and the balloon pops, all that round’s money is lost. This is inspired by the famous Pymetrics balloon game. A player who manages to collect all the balloons but earns very low sums is classified as cautious, whereas a player who tends to pop a lot of balloons but gain higher sums is considered a risk-taker and adventurous.
Implementation
https://editor.p5js.org/hessaala/sketches/wcdYbG-aD
The game starts with an instructions page, explaining the different buttons and game idea to the player. As soon as the player is ready to proceed, a click on the screen takes them to the main game page. The game page has an inflatable balloon and 2 buttons, “inflate” which increases the balloon size, and “collect” which banks the money at any stage. It also presents information on the number of pumps and current earned in every round, and updates the total earned. After 8 rounds, the game ends and the score is displayed.
Challenges
It was a bit confusing working with different pages for the game. For regular shapes and text, it was relatively simple to figure out. The thing I struggled with the most is working with buttons in the separate pages. I figured that they don’t work like the shapes, rather they’re a separate element that are not actually on a ‘canvas’. The solution was to use the show() and hide() features.
Design Choices
Since it’s a balloon game, I immediately thought of making it a kid’s game. So, the theme I went for is light and plain but also child friendly. I used object-oriented programming for the main game page (moving clouds), and a garden image in the end page.
Future Direction
I would love to make the balloons pop at different planned rates and not random based on their colors. This game could be used for investment banking tests to analyze candidates risk-taking and learning abilities.