If you are picking up your smartphone again to switch from one social media app to another, how about guiding your fingertips towards a few games this time? Not just any game, these are developed by students who are finding fun and engaging ways to remind us that though we are still on a war-footing against COVID, we shall overcome someday soon. That was the impetus behind the month-long (February to March 2021) CovidGameathon, sponsored by the US Consulate in Hyderabad in partnership with St Francis College for Women and in collaboration with AngelHack, a global hackathon organisation. You can play the winning games at hearthyderabad.com, but before that, let's find out what the winners had to say about their experience.
Questions to be answered
What makes MakeUpNiramaya the absolute winners is that it's not just an arcade game, it is interspersed with a few quizzes too. Wait, let Mayuri Senad, MSc student from St Francis who graduated this year, tell it like it is. "Apart from the game being about a COVID positive person dodging others so as to not infect them and finding frontline workers who would educate them about the virus, we thought adding questions will really drive the awareness factor," says the 23-year-old who is based out of Nagpur and was coordinating virtually with a team of five based out of Hyderabad and Chennai. She credits their Lead Developer Mukil for taking the charge when it comes to the coding part.
"There are five levels and as far as the quiz goes, the feedback we received from the judges was that they were of the level of a medical student and we needed to simplify it further," she says, which they did. Here's a team in which every team member pulled their weight, even though a few were new to game development, and managed to emerge as the winners.
Which avatar will you be?
You can either be a member of the police, in which case you'll throw masks at those people who need it, or a regular citizen, wherein you'll be required to collect the essentials you need and rush back home when you are playing CoVillain. Whatever your choice may be, this much is assured that you will be thoroughly engaged. "The motto was to make people understand the effort the frontline workers are putting in and encourage the former to stay indoors as much as they can," says Niral Verma, the second-year Computer Science Engineering student of ITER, Siksha 'O' Anusandhan, who also informs that soon, we can don the avatar of a doctor as well in their game.
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This team had it tough, says the 21-year-old. Some of the team members, including herself, and the family, tested positive while they were developing the game. They were delayed, but they refused to let anything or anyone deny them the opportunity. They persevered and won the HEART category to show everyone how it's done.
Avoid at all costs
Using Construct 3 as their design engine, Satarupa Deb, who is pursuing Computer Science Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, and her team designed Corona Convicts. This game weaponises vaccines while the main character in the game hops, skips and jumps to avoid the virus. "We wanted to drive out these misconceptions around vaccines," says the 19-year-old.
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For more on them check out hearthyderabad.com
