Team HackOverflow: Zara Ali, Preethi Nagabandi, Victor Li, Jerry Liu
Our Project: Tree-t Yourself!
Tree-t Yourself is an environmentally educuational tree game targeted towards lovers of Buzzfeed quizzes, kids, anyone eager to learn, and lovers of, well, trees! The game presents you with a series of words and your job is to pick the word each time that resonates the most with you. Once you find yourself at the end of a path, and the game has enough information about you, your choices will spawn a tree! This tree comes with educational facts that will instill the importance of this tree in history, in its ecosystem, and in present time.
At the starting screen, you are asked to enter your name. After entering your name, you start at the first decision. These decisions are two or three buttons all of which have a unique word on them. The player is asked to choose the word that currently resonates with them, and after clicking the corresponding button it will move up the path and generate another decision screen with different words affected by the choice they had previously made. This leads them down a path, until the game has enough information and spawns a tree. After giving them the type of tree their decisions have led them to, it gives them three facts about that tree.
The simplicity of the gameplay in its Buzzfeed-esque quiz style makes it so anyone at any age (so long as they can operate a mouse and can read) would be able to get to a tree. It is simple enough that this game could be targeted towards children with no knowledge of the types of trees in the world - but even teenagers, adults and the elderly will find the gameplay entertaining enough to encourage them to take the time to learn about the tree they spawned. The tree facts at the end all leave the player with a sense of how the tree is historically, environmentally, and presently significant in the world. As well, it allows the player to get a taste of the uniqueness and diversity there is of trees around the world. This game can potentially open up some very relevant dialogue about deforestation, diversity of ecosystems, and the importance of trees in the changing world, especially with climate change. Allowing the player to spawn their tree by tailoring it through their decisions also makes it unique to them, and hopefully leaves the player wanting to know and learn more about their special tree.
We used Python and Tkinter for the GUI
Run the main.py file in the Hackathon folder and have fun!
Best "Green" Hack
Best Educational Hack
Best Game