Stranded in Space

Title Screen Backgroun
Endscreen

Inspiration## Inspiration

We initially wanted to create a space themed game, so we took inspiration from common space based games like space invaders. However, we wanted to make a slightly story based game, so we decided to incorporate some other challenges. One of them was meant to be users building a ship, so we took inspiration from typical jigsaw games and slightly modified it to make it more interesting.

What it does

Our game immerses the user as an astronaut lost in space, making it past three difficult games to head home. In the first game, the astronaut looks for missing supplies, needing to match all pairs of pictures to move on. In the second game, the astronaut must reassemble the navigation screen through a puzzle. Finally, in the last challenge, the astronaut must skillfully dodge obstacles and make it home.

How we built it

We created this project through using pygame and generative AI. Pygame allowed us to create screens, have different sprites interact with each other, as well as having buttons that redirected to different pages. By using generative AI, we were able to get a basic idea of a code frame for the game, and then repurpose it for our needs. All of the pixelated game graphs were done by hand.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into were learning how to use the graphical elements of pygame. For example, when coding our 3rd minigame, we ran into a problem where our hitboxes for the ship and the asteroids were too big

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team is proud of learning to use pygame and ultimately creating a cohesive project. All of us had very limited experience with pygame before, and it took countless trials and errors to achieve our intended result. We also divided up the work very well, each working on a game and then putting it together with an introduction screen.

What we learned

This was all of our first times creating a game in Python, so it was a great experience learning how to use the pygame interface and its different functionalities.

What's next for Stranded in Space

Moving on, we hope to continue our exploration of Python’s pygame module, creating more interactive and challenging levels for the user to progress through. We also strive to experiment with further usage of AI in writing code, whether it’s debugging, generating pictures for our game, or explaining functions of pygame.