View only link: https://editor.p5js.org/lunaland/full/lguzYiIJr
1. Concept of the game: I decided to create an interactive piece called “Day in the Life of a Cat”, where the user gets to experience normal cat stuff that cats get to do throughout their days.
- I have a hairless cat, Luna. I miss her a lot since she lives with my grandparents, and I decided to remind myself of her by creating this interactive experience. Everything that the game includes is pretty much all she does every day – eat, play with random things, terrorize insects outside, and poop.
- What and how: The user gets to experience morning, day, and night as a cat, clicking on different items and discovering what they can do with them. I decided to keep the interface very simple, since overcomplicating things would make it hard for me personally to produce a good interactive experience. Each part of the day has its own mini-game to complete in order to transition into the next part of the day. The user collects points for completing the mini games. You get 30 points in total. You can play the game again after finishing it.
- Additional stuff: Initially, I wanted to draw all of the backdrops myself or create them using code, using simple shapes and colors. Then I remembered a game I always wanted to play called Animal Crossing, and wanted to create a similar atmosphere – cute and simple background decor. I wanted to use images from the internet, but none were “flat” enough for a backdrop, and I couldn’t insert my own images in there due to a lack of space. In the end, I decided to generate Animal Crossing and other cute mini-games-inspired backdrops, as well as all of the items that are needed to complete the game. I generated everything through ChatGPT image generation.
2. Code that I’m proud of and why
The part of my code that I am most proud of is the scene system and the way the game moves from one part of the day to another. I used different game states like the instruction screen, morning scene, day scene, night scene, and ending scene. This made the project feel real and interactive, as if it’s truly a cat that goes about its day. I am proud of this because it helped me organize the game clearly and made it easier to control what the user sees at each moment.
3. What I found challenging
The most challenging part for me was making the different scenes connect smoothly. At first, I struggled with where the player should go after each interaction. I had to think carefully about how to move from the instruction screen to the morning scene, then to mini-game scenes, then back again, and finally to the ending, without making it confusing for the user and me. This taught me that you need to have both the idea and the execution planned to detail before starting the process, because I had to redo a lot of stuff to create mini-game scenes in between the bigger scenes.