Project Details

Financial literacy is a major issue in Kenya. Krazy Kiosk is a game that challenges players (aged 11-15) to succeed in a fantasy job as the owner of a new and upcoming kiosk. Balancing issues like saving money, time limitations, and environmental tips forces players to become wiser business owners. Krazy Kiosk teaches players to keep track of their profits and loses (a useful skill for any future entrepreneur) in a fun and innovative way that could later be applied in real world situations.

Financial Decisions: Deciding on when to upgrade

Deciding when to upgrade is one of the more challenging aspects of Krazy Kiosk. Once the player has made a large profit they will be faced with the challenge of spending their money or staying the same. Spending money might cause the player to miss their deadline, yet not purchasing an upgrade may cause the player to lose profit. If the player makes profit, the upgrade store opens up and becomes more appealing and valuable to the players. As the kiosks are upgraded, the more attractive they become, thus luring in more customers.
Real World Application

Krazy Kiosk is teaching the player how to maintain their business and earn a profit. One of the skills Krazy Kiosk introduces to the player is double book accounting. Double book accounting is essentially a virtual aid that shows the player their gains and losses. It will present the name of the fruit, the quantity of the produce the player has bought, how much the produce is being sold for, and how much profit the player made that day. Double book accounting is a skill that can be used not only in Krazy Kiosk but in real life entrepreneur jobs. `

Krazy Kiosk also applies real world tools. Cell phones are one of the most valuable pieces of technology in our day and age. Many real life businesses in Kenya use cell phones to find out current prices of produce in general and prices of neighboring vendors. In Krazy Kiosk a cell phone is given to the player. The player receives daily updates about the weather and information about nearby vendors. The game teaches the player all the valuable tools they need to become a successful entrepreneur on and off the tablet.

Deciding when to upgrade is one of the more challenging aspects of Krazy Kiosk. Once the player has made a large profit they will be faced with the challenge of spending their money or staying the same. Spending money might cause the player to miss their deadline, yet not purchasing an upgrade may cause the player to lose profit. If the player makes profit, the upgrade store opens up and becomes more appealing and valuable to the players. As the kiosks are upgraded, the more attractive they become, thus luring in more customers. If a player has made it this far, there is a strong chance they will win and succeed in sending their child to college.

Technical Requirements

Krazy Kiosk will be developed as a downloadable app for Android tablets. The game requires the following technical aspects as part of development:

    Currency and kiosk space dynamically update as the player purchases produce.
    Player customization: players name their kiosk and see the name on screen later in the game
    Randomized tips appearing once per level.
    At the end of each level the double book accounting screen shows profit updates.

Visual Design

Krazy Kiosk has a friendly feel to it, and yet the real and delicious-looking fruit and produce images maintain an element of realism. Krazy Kiosk simultaneously maintains a cartoonish look-and-feel through the clip-art words, buttons, and other assets.

NuVu Game Title

NuVu TouchScreen Learning Studio

Arjun Bakshi

Silmar Bueno

Molly Hershkowitz

 

Summary:

Do you want to fight a battle that has been going on for thousands of years? Victory leads you to a healthy life and an endless amount of helpful tips. We wanted to create a game that will teach the children and adults in Kenya the importance of washing their hands. We came up with a tablet application that will remind people how to properly wash their hands for twenty seconds. The screen will have two giant hands that have germs on them. Using simple objects and tools like soap and water, students will have to thoroughly scrub the hands for twenty seconds and get rid of all the germs. We realized that generally people enjoy games with competition. This game makes the students want to have the best score, while at the same time learn an important lesson. We put a sidebar that had the different times of day the students should wash their hands to show them how many germs they can attain throughout the day.

 

The Problem: This is the Problem

The problem is many children and adults in Kenya and India do not properly wash their hands enough during the day. This causes many people to fall sick or develop diseases such as diarrhea. In addition, many germs can form on their hands like, E. Coli, Salmonella, and Rotavirus. These three bacterias are very common and can cause intense stomach pain. We are trying to inform children and adults the importance of washing hands. This game will also educate students on different diseases and bacteria that are common where they live. This is helpful because it warns them and teaches them to prevent getting bacteria.  

 

Game Description

This game will teach students the importance of washing your hands and how/when to do so. Students will learn that they should spend about 20 seconds washing their hands with soap and water. There will be music playing during that 20 seconds. They will also learn the important times to wash their hands: before eating, cooking, and after doing some type of chore like changing a diaper. It will teach them about how if they don’t wash their hands enough/correctly, they would probably get sick. There will be different kinds of germs on the hands that cause different diseases and things to happen if they aren’t washed off with soap and water.

 

How it Works

Players will start by reading brief instructions on how the game works. After, they will learn about the different types of germs and their effects. Then a message will pop up describing a

scenario that will cause you to wash your hands. You then start washing your hands. First tapping the water to turn on then touching the soap to  “load up on soap.”  You have 20 seconds to scrub all the germs off. All the leftover germs get added onto the hands for the next level. At the end of the rounds your score is added up and you win clean coins for how good of a job you did.You can then use the coins to buy better washing items in the store. These all have different power ups and cost different amount of coins.  

 

India or Kenya

This game tends to both India and Kenya. One difference would be the skin of it. The difference of the two games would mainly be the physical appearance like the water resource and the type of the sink. Also, the song playing in the background will be specific to the country and be a well known anthem.

 

Current Progress

At this point we are trying to improve and better our game with the feedback we received. Nivi brought up a point of how kids can learn during the game. The learning aspect seems hidden because of the set up. One example of that is how the timer is 20 seconds. The reason behind the 20 seconds is because that is the recommended time for a correct hand wash. Which is the length of the song Jambo which every kid knows. So our hope is that when kids are washing their hands they will sing the song and take the suggested time to properly clean their hands.  We also are trying to improve the little nuts and bolts that we come across with during the game.

 

In Kenya and India, technology is becoming more and more prevalent in the education systems. Donors are providing schools with Android tablets that feature textbooks, educational videos, and tutorials. An aspect missing from these tablets is games. Our goal was to help fix this and create educational games for these students. In DemocraCITY is a tablet-based strategy game that puts the player on the frontlines of running a successful democratic society. In DemocraCITY, the player is challenged to please a diverse group of voters with limited resources. The player does his best to distribute these resources evenly and to recognize all members of the community in order to win a re-election.  DemocraCITY will inspire students to use democratic tactics in everyday scenarios.

A round of DemocraCITY consists of three main parts: placing promises, choosing and placing resources, and holding a vote.  Click on the PDF above to play through a round of DemocraCITY (many of the choices are predetermined due to restrictions of Balsamiq).

About Our Company
Will and Mackenzie, the founders of WM Games, both have a passion for working with and teaching children. WM Games first, and only game, is Trash Dash. Trash Dash was created by Will and Mackenzie during a four week studio they attended at the NUVU program in Cambridge Massachusetts. The main goal of the studio was to create tablet games for ages 11-15 in Kenya and India. Both founders of WM Games enjoy programming and animating, making the studio a perfect fit for both of them. They both ultimately wanted to create an environmental game that would be fun and teach students how to properly dispose garbage. It took them two weeks to conceive and develop the idea of Trash Dash before they started prototyping. After a long four weeks, WM Games was created and their first game was a success.
Our Philosophy 

 Will and Mackenzie are close in age with the students they created Trash Dash for. They felt it was easy for them to judge if 11-15 year olds would enjoy their game. Programming wise they both did not have much experience, but enjoyed it alot. They had never had training with programming before but picked it up quite easily. Will and Mackenzie have had much experience with photoshop and created the graphics with ease.

Key Players

 

Will Truslow, Game designer, Programmer

Will Truslow is a Junior at Beaver Country Day School. His interests include filmmaking,

Mackenzie Donahue, UI designer, visual designer

Mackenzie Donahue is a tenth grader attending Beaver Country Day School. Her interests are photography, community service, and traveling. Mackenzie is a part of a community service group called ASC. She spends most of her time worker with homeless kids from ages three to twenty. When Mackenzie teaches the kids something new she feels very accomplished. Her experience teaching kids had definitely helped prepare her for creating educational games. Being interested in photography and photoshop was perfect for visual design. Mackenzie strived when it came to creating graphics. Traveling is another one of Mackenzies passions. “I really hope someday I can play the games I have created with children around the world” said Mackenzie.

Click on the PDF to go through a 1 "game day" demo of Krazy Kiosk

Final

Goal of the game:

We wanted to create a game that would teach the children and adults in Kenya the importance of washing their hands and how/when to do so. They will learn the important times to wash their hands: before eating, cooking, and after doing some type of chore like changing a diaper. Students will learn that they should spend about 20 seconds washing their hands with soap and water. There will be music playing during that 20 seconds. It will teach them about how if they don’t wash their hands enough/correctly, they would probably get sick. There will be different kinds of germs on the hands that cause different diseases and things to happen if they aren’t washed off with soap and water.

How the game works:

Players will start by reading brief instructions on how the game works. After, they will learn about the different types of germs and their effects. Then a message will pop up describing a scenario that will cause someone to wash his or her hands. The player then starts washing his/her hands. First the player must tap the faucet  to turn on the water and then touch the soap to  “load up on soap.”  Players have 20 seconds per level to scrub all the germs off. All the leftover germs get added onto the hands for the next level. At the end of the rounds your score is added up and you win clean coins for how good of a job you did.You can then use the coins to buy better washing items in the store. These all have different power ups and cost different amount of coins. The red germs are worth 5 points. Yellow germs are worth 10 points. Blue germs are worth 20 points.

 

Pitch

Many children around the world think it is okay to litter, which is contributing to all kinds of environmental issues. Trash Dash is an addictive, tablet-based superhero game, that educates players on the proper disposal of trash. The more bottles, paper, and other trash the player disposes of, the more points they wins. Trash Dash is a fun, interactive way to learn about the difference any one person can make by removing litter from the environment.

Reward System

The reward system is a great way to get kids to want to do something. In Trash Dash, when trash is collected, points are earned. A high score page will also be included. This adds a competitive aspect to the game which makes it more fun.  Whoever collects the most trash, gains the most points, and gets on the highscore page.

Obstacles 

In Trash Dash, you are not only picking up trash, but you are avoiding cars and other obstacles. Adding these challenges contribute to the addictive power of Trash Dash, as players want to repeat levels to anticipate and avoid all obstacles and raise their score.

Character 

The main character is a superhero named Hodari. Hodari is based off of a Kenyan character named Makmende. Makmende stops people from doing bad things. In Trash Dash there is a Matatu littering trash. Hodari (the player) is following it collecting as much trash as he can. Much like Makmende, Hodari is trying to stop people from doing bad things.

Technical Requirements 

The Trash Dash prototype was created with a combination of Game Maker 8 and Balsamiq Mockups. For future versions of the game, development will be completed using Unity. The game is predominantly an action game, with drag and drop functionality in the bonus levels.

Visual Development 

The visual look of Trash Dash is cartoon-y without being overly imaginative and zany. While the main character is a super hero, factors such as gravity are not overlooked and still play a factor in the user-experience. Most of the animations are sub-par at best with pixelation marrying a few of the assets and sprites. If the creators had more time they would certainly have improved the quality of this, possibly adding different styles of the character doing different things as opposed to standing still.

Our main goal for the game is to teach Kenyan and Indian children simple and easy financial techniques that they can apply to their own lives. The concepts we are presenting virtually force children to learn how to earn a profit, save money efficiently, and record their data in order to grow as an entrepreneur in a fun and creative way. The player’s goal is to evolve their “kiosk” into a powerful money-making resource. In order to win, players must learn how to budget and spend money wisely based on market value and customer demand.

Starting the game was somewhat difficult for our group. We brainstormed a lot of different ideas but all of them did not seem fun. We played the lemonade stand game and ideas sparked. We wanted to have a market type thing where the player could choose the price to sell their produce at and choose which produce to sell. Krazy Kiosk essentially was very similar to the Lemonade Stand game. Lemonade Stand game followed a person for one week who's selling lemonade at a homemade stand. The game presents the player with charts of their gains and losses. The one goal of the game: make a profit. That is what we wanted our game to be most like, though we didn't want the one goal to be: make a profit. So, as a result, we decided the players goal will be to send their children to college, but behind the scenes, their real goal is to, well, make a profit. 

We started off by creating many sketches of what our game would look like. We reasearched which foods were typical for either Kenya or Inida. We looked up prices that would be considered reasonable in these countries. We looked up what kind of delicasesy the have in their countries that could be sold for more. Our group drew out different types of Kiosks for each of the countries. For example, in Kenya the kiosk started off more as a small cart but in India it started off as a rug on the floor. Our group had to go through many cirtical decsion making like how much money would the player have at the start of the game, how many produce can they purchase, is there a limit to how much they can sell the produce for. All of these decsions had to be made before we started creating our demo. 

Balsamaq and Photoshop were our main two resources throughout the demo making process. While both are extremely frustrating, we managed to get the job done. Balsamaq is the software we used to physically create the game demo, while Photoshop was used to create all of the graphic designs. We stuggled with the issues of sending our work to one another over Balsamaq because of resourse folders. All of these programs were new to use so creating these games was not our only issue. The 4-week process of this game was more than frustrating to say the least, but the three of us remained calm and worked together which was a key component to getting our game demo done.