Inspiration
Littering is a big problem in our society, as it damages the environment, wastes resources, and harms the wildfire. To help spread awareness about the prevalence of litter and how it squanders resources that could have been used elsewhere, I made Trash to Cash, inspired by the idle clicker game genre. The game is made with custom art, graphics, and code.
What it does
Trash to Cash is an idle clicker game where you pick up litter from the sidewalk, and recycle it into useful resources. These resources can then be turned into manufactured products to be sold, or used to get upgrades to pick up litter and manufacture products more efficiently. Made for desktop! Mobile is not supported.
You start off with nothing except your motivation for litter cleanup. As you keep cleaning the streets and craft resources, you unlock more recipes, and more upgrades!
Eventually, you can move to The Neglected District, and unlock new types of trash!
- 📰 Pick up balls of paper and old newspapers, and process them into books!
- 🟪 Pick up plastic bags and bottles, and turn them into sheeting!
- 🔨 Gather metal cans and turn them into nails!
- ⬛ Take old tires and turn them into insulation!
- ⏹ Clean up glass and process it into useful parts!
- 🍌 Compost food waste into fertilizer!
- 📠 Build complex chasses and parts for increasingly complex machines!
- 🚗 Move to the Neglected District, and gain access to more resources and better machines!
With upgrades, you can make your journey easier!
- 📚 Enlist writers and booksellers to automatically write and sell books!
- ✋ Create Auto-Collectors to collect litter for you!
- 🛠 Improve your crafting speed and recycling efficiency!
- 😈 Submit to the ever-growing demands of capitalism, forsake your morality, and start spreading propaganda to increase litters to ensure the future of your business???
With a long progression line, you'll be sure to have fun for hours! (or however long you feel like playing)
How we built it
The game is built with React, Vite, and TypeScript. Data such as item types, garbage types, crafting recipes, and progress is stored in TypeScript as class instances and objects, which can be easily expanded upon to add more types. The game state is stored in localStorage to save data.
Challenges we ran into
Game balancing was quite difficult, as it required making the game hard yet still fun and engaging. It was also difficult to make a user interface for the game that was intuitive and inviting, as I'm mostly a backend developer. However, I managed to make a UI that was understandable and accessible after a few hours of tinkering and testing placements. I'm also not an artist, so making sprites and assets were difficult.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud of having the game be playable and with lots of progression. I'm especially proud of having the little messages pop up when you collect trash, as it improves the game feel significantly and makes it game more fun to play.
What we learned
I learned a lot about game design, balancing, and code structuring after this project, and it was equally fun to code as it is to play. Having everything come together into a fully playable game is very satisfying and achieving.
What's next for Trash to Cash
Currently, the game has no definite ending, and the progression, despite being long, still has an end. In the future, I could add more progression, more areas, and maybe even an ending.
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