Like A Good Neighbor

Title Screen
Going to Apartment
Kitchen
Bedroom
Successful Ending
Potential Bad Ending Screen

Inspiration

We knew from the start that we wanted to build a RPG-inspired game, but were short on ideas. State Farm’s prompt to gamify insurance education caught our attention, and we took it quite literally. Drawing inspiration from Untitled Goose Game, we created our own take on how everyday accidents can spiral out of control. Each “accident” is based on real situations, such as house fires or theft, both of which are covered by State Farm. Much of this was new to us as college students, so building the game became an eye-opening experience about risks we hadn’t considered before.

What it does

Like a Good Neighbor was created to prevent and teach college students about potential dangers in a humorous, engaging way as well as encouraging good habits. The game plays almost like a puzzle: users must think logically as they go about their day, with small mistakes leading to accidents. This emphasizes the risks that come with everyday life. We deliberately opted for a simple and silly interface to connect with our audience and reduce how daunting of a task insurance can feel.

How we built it

We developed the game in Godot using its scripting language, GDScript. Our assets combined both hand-drawn and realistic assets within a visual-novel-inspired interface. We also used Figma to organize designs and prototype layouts.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was building proper boundaries in our drawn backgrounds to guide sprite movement. Since we were all new to using Godot, there was a steep learning curve. Balancing time between asset creation, coding, and debugging was difficult, especially since two of us were first-time hackers. As a result, we often found ourselves reaching out and learning from those around us.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully tackled an idea we had little experience in and turned it into something we’re genuinely proud of. Despite being new to the tools and the process, we were able to build a playable game while having a lot of fun along the way. We gained a lot from this project, not only in game development but also collaboration and problem-solving. The journey was as rewarding as the outcome.

What's next for Like A Good Neighbor

We’re excited to continue developing Like A Good Neighbor. There were features we didn’t implement in the time frame, including interactive elements and branching puzzles that give players the chance to revisit scenarios and fix their earlier mistakes. We also wish to include a situation where the player forgets to check the weather, resulting in them driving through hail. This is both a realistic situation, and gives us the opportunity to branch ouut to traffic and weather claims. We’re eager to keep pushing the project forward and refining the experience for our players.