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Concept
For my midterm, I wanted to make a project that isn’t just fun, but also means something to me, feels useful to create, and reflects my interests, which for me is combining women’s empowerment, sports, and music. Because this project allows so much freedom, my mind kept jumping from idea to idea. I finally decided on a concept that felt meaningful and achievable: an interactive story experience where users guide a female athlete through multiple sports — football, basketball, and martial arts — while overcoming challenges in the form of negative comments from people, culminating in a celebratory dance that reflects the user’s gameplay.
I also wanted to incorporate music, one of my biggest passions, into the gameplay. Each action the user takes (scoring a goal, making a basket, or landing a punch) will add a layer of sound to a final anthem, letting players create a rhythm-based celebration that reflects their journey and success.
To make the experience authentic and inspiring, I decided to use real female athletes as the characters for each stage: Sam Kerr for football, Breanna Stewart for basketball, and Ronda Rousey, the first female UFC champion, for martial arts. Each athlete has a quick introduction before their stage to give context and highlight their achievements and the obstacles they’ve overcome.
My project aims to:
- Educate users about the basics of each sport.
- Empower women by breaking stereotypes and highlighting achievements.
- Engage users through rhythm-based gameplay that integrates music and beats.
- Inspire users to create a unique anthem reflecting the character’s journey.
Design
I want the design to be interactive and bold. The journey starts with a fullscreen instruction screen, and each stage is preceded by a quick introduction of the athlete, with a short text and a character.
The gameplay is divided into stages:
- Football: Users dribble and shoot as Sam Kerr. Negative comments appear as barriers, which shatter when the user scores, adding beats to the anthem.
- Basketball: Users control Breanna Stewart, shooting and dribbling while shattering barriers and adding beats to the music.
- Martial Arts: Users perform punches and kicks with Ronda Rousey, breaking barriers that add more beats to the anthem.
- Celebration / Dance: The beats from previous stages combine into a unique anthem, and character performs dance moves that sync with the rhythm, celebrating the journey.
Visually, I’m keeping the design stylized and clean, using shapes for interactive objects. Sounds, like cheering, percussion, and piano, respond dynamically to user actions, making the experience engaging.
Frightening / Challenging Aspects
There are a few parts of this project that I’m worried might be tricky:
- Making the rhythm-based gameplay work: I’m unsure about getting the sounds from scoring, punching, or breaking barriers to line up and feel smooth.
- Creating each sport stage: Each sport has different moves and controls, and it might be hard to make them all work well.
- Drawing the characters and barriers: Making all the athletes and objects using shapes in p5.js could take a lot of time and get complicated.
- Combining all the beats into a final anthem: I’m unsure if the sounds from football, basketball, and martial arts will come together nicely to make a fun and satisfying rhythm at the end.
Risk Prevention
To manage the different sports stages, I will use separate layers so only the relevant athlete, objects, and barriers show up at the right time. For example, when the user moves from football to basketball, the football elements disappear and the basketball stage appears. Designing all the characters and barriers from scratch in p5.js could take a long time, so I started making them on separate canvases to work faster and keep things organized before combining them into the full project. As well as I started on the intro page. Making interactions feel natural is also tricky because I need to detect clicks, key presses, or movements on objects made of multiple shapes. I’ve started experimenting with this early to make sure the gameplay will feel smooth.