BedRot

Inspiration

The inspiration of BedRot comes from some of our own experiences with going through mental health difficulties and how the little things can help point someone in the right direction. It is a project that demonstrates the importance of doing the smallest things- even if they seem unconventional or insignficant.

What it does

BedRot is a interactive visual novel that goes through the journey of the main character[you] after you recently won the opportunity of having your own Mental Health Fairy! Your fairy helps point you in the right direction regardless of how small the task might seem. As you continue your daily life you will see how these small tasks compound into real change. Towards the end of the game you will be exposed to three different outcomes. Try to get them all!

How we built it

We built BedRot with the game engine Ren'Py, using a combination of Ren'Py's own scripting and the use of Python to achieve our desired result. Ren'Py is a open source visual novel engine that can make applications for a variety of platforms including Windows, IOS, Android and much more. Ren'Py has also been used in popular visual novels such as Doki Doki Literature Club! and Class of '09.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into issues relating to our inexperience with the engine, specifically issues with editing GUI elements, implementing images, and issues relating to game logic and general Object Oriented Programming issues. We worked a lot of these issues after learning more about the engine, its abilities, and the syntax to use said abilities and through trial and error.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the work and energy we put into this project. It was our first time completing any project of this scale in a group, and despite being completely unfamiliar with the process, we managed to create a working game and have fun in the process. In the end, even though we felt like we could add more and improve more- we got close to the goal of what we wanted. It was such a tight deadline that we all had to play our parts- whether it be writing dialogue to make the game more endearing, or struggling to create a minigame, or simply struggling to piece the game together at all. We all took our parts seriously, and are super proud that we made this happen as a group.

What we learned

As this was our group's first Hackathon, it taught us how we could manage our time in a more efficient manner by planning the bare minimum mechanics to make the base project function and things we should consider as additional elements to implement if time permits. Many of us had not created such a project before- let alone in a group, so it was also an important lesson in delegating specific tasks. One of us even found the experience particularly educational, not having any previous project experience. Because of this, we were able to clear out large portions of the game at the same time. Also, we came in relatively unprepared- but because we came in unprepared, we learned exactly what we were missing when it comes to going to a hackathon. It would've made things better if we learned simple commands for Ren'Py, and planned out the scope of our project a lot better.

What's next for BedRot

We hope to add new features to BedRot including more mini-games for each action the character can participate in, remaking the GUI, improving current game mechanics, adding sound effects, more in-depth dialogue, and adding more art (including making custom backgrounds), and committing more time to each section to improve the overall quality.

Built With

• python
• ren'py
• vscode