CalmBuddy

A calming game hub for kids, designed to ease anxiety during medical visits through simple, soothing browser-based mini-games.

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🌟 Inspiration

My younger brother recently had to get a vaccine at a doctor’s visit, and he was really scared. It took multiple attempts before the nurse could finally give the shot. Watching that experience made me realize how stressful medical visits can be for kids and how helpful it would be to have a calming tool. That’s how the idea for CalmBuddy came to be: a simple, web-based game designed to help children relax during shots and other medical procedures.

💡 What It Does

CalmBuddy offers interactive mini-games that help reduce anxiety in children during medical visits. Each game is designed to be soothing, engaging, and distraction-based. So far, I’ve created:

  • 🐾 Pet Calmer, where the user can gently pet a virtual animal and keep it relaxed.
  • 🎈 Balloon Breather , where the user can practice deep breathing by inflating and deflating a balloon in sync with your breath.

These games are short and calming — perfect for use right before or during a shot.

🛠️ How We Built It

I built CalmBuddy using just HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript, without any frameworks or libraries. The goal was to keep the site lightweight, responsive, and simple to use across any device with a browser.

🧩 Challenges We Ran Into

One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to animate the balloon's inflation and deflation in a way that felt smooth and responsive. I had to experiment with CSS transforms and JavaScript intervals to get it just right.

🏆 Accomplishments We're Proud Of

I'm proud that I was able to:

  • Design and build two calming mini-games from scratch.
  • Make the entire project functional and polished within just a couple of days.
  • Create something that could actually help kids feel safer and more in control during a stressful moment.

📚 What We Learned

Through this project, I learned:

  • How to simulate animations like balloon breathing using only HTML/CSS/JS.
  • How to structure a small, multi-page web app.
  • How to design for both functionality and emotional impact.

🚀 What's Next for CalmBuddy

In the future, I plan to:

  • Add more mini-games for different calming styles (like visual drawing or calming sounds).
  • Let users choose a different pet for the pet calmer mini-game
  • Explore adding different sounds/musics for better relaxation
  • Possibly make CalmBuddy accessible on mobile

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