Rocket Team

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV1f0OmaW7E

http://abequartheflyingman.earth/

Summary

Long-distance space travel comes with a multitude of health risks, but it is difficult to imagine the combined effects of these risks, especially for those who are not fluent in NASA jargon. Your challenge is to create an educational game for middle schoolers (approx. ages 10-14) that focuses on keeping an avatar alive and healthy during a voyage from Earth to Mars and back, and that identifies the most difficult challenges and the biggest risks involved in human spaceflight.

How We Addressed This Challenge

Abequar is native Brazilian Tupi-Guarani word for "flying man". That´s what this is all about, human beeings flying into the space to explore our solar system, our galaxy and the universe, while learning in the process.

We addressed the challenge by designing the game, Abequar - The Flying man, a cartoon RPG game, click to action style, to be attractive for kids.

The game is designed to be intuitive and easy to use, so kids can have fun, to trigger their curiosity while teaching them about the spaceflights and its dangers shapping the future generation of astronauts. 

Our Team:

A team of engineers, artists, and passionates by space and science (including fiction)

1. Diego De Mauro - Infrastructure, Storyline, creative, voice, video.
2. Pedro De Mauro - 3D animations, arts
3. Roberto Galian - Art, UX design, visual identity, branding
4. Monike - Graphic Designer
5. Felipe Ferreira - Graphic Designer

Website with gameplay video:

http://abequartheflyingman.earth/

Mockup

Click here to access the Mockup project

CLICK HERE to access the playable project at Figma

*Please click on options into the right top corner and set to scale to fit or press "Z" in your keyboard for best experience

Video Demo

CLIQUE HERE TO ACCESS THE VIDEO TRAILER

Story Guide

As part of a worldwide joint effort, led by Nasa, to explore our solar system, the player (Abequar) is chosen to lead a mission to explore our Solar System.

The game starts at the launch site. A few facts about astronauts' training will be shown.

1) Nationality (doesn´t affect outcomes, but may stimulate proud) - The Power of Ten

The player will be presented with options that may affect their future challenges outcome:

2) SelecCrew composition -> Affects hazards outcomes

a.   Doctors (soften biohazards outcomes)

b.   Engineers (soften mechanics hazards)

c.   Biologists (raise the chance of finding life)

d.  Pilots (soften the chance of landing or return failure)

e. Cooker and Cleaner (No bonus for challanges)

3) Choose your Player:

Player can be:

• Engineer
• Doctor
• Biologist
• Cooker
• Cleaner
• Pilot

4) Select your Mission

After the launch (CGI), a spacecraft map will be presented, and the player may control 1 astronaut and can explore the available equipment. When selecting an equipment, the description will be shown. A Countdown will be shown in the top left corner, with the mission remaining time, and a simple accomplishments score will be shown in the top right for the main mission chosen. In the lower right, a crew member's health score will be shown, showing if the crew members are eating properly, exercising, and sleeping.

At this point the player can explore the spacecraft and choose to exercise, eat or sleep. The first challenge will just be triggered when thIS 3 actions are completed.

As soon as the player completes each of these tasks, the player will be presented with facts about the importance of doing it, and the 5 basic challenges categories will start.

There will be basically 5 fixed challenges categories and random disaster challenges. Depending on the level selected, 1 or more challange from each of the categories will be included.

For the 5 fixed challenges (one of each category), the player will have to choose between the options on how to deal with that particular event. If the answers is correct, a small animation will be shown to congratulate the user for its response, or in case of a wrong answer the astronaut will be presented with a Failure screen, and details about that hazard and what was the best way to deal with that Hazard. Abequar (The player) will not die in case it fails, instead, a new challenge for that category will be shown. With the correct answer the score will grow, and the player will be back to the spacecraft map, and can continue to explore the equipment, exercise, or sleep.

These are the 5 Basic Challenge categories that the equipment may trigger (or time).

Hazard 1: Radiation (after eating, sleeping and exercising)

Hazard 2: Isolation (After trying to use the communicator to message home)

Hazard 3: Distance (after checking the radar or location/distance from goal)

Hazard 4: Gravity Fields (after returning Earth - Last)

Hazard 5: Hostile/ Closed Environments (after checking the medical kit)

After completing at least 1 challenge on each basic category, a random fictional disaster or challenge will be triggered as bonus.

An example of a bonus challenge, a solar flare explosion may happen and start affecting the spaceship eletronic equipments or make the crew to get sick (unless the player takes apropriate action). Another example is the spacecraft will suffer meteorite damage and leak oxygen). These bonus challenges are fictional but plausible challenges or catastrophic events, These fictional events may or may not be a hazard, as for example, finding extraterrestrial artifacts, discovering asteroids, or finding micro biological life during the journey.

These events are like minigames, into the spacecraft map, and the player will have to deal with that hazard to survive. In case the player doesn't achieve the minigame goal, he will fail, and will be presented with the correct solution for that minigame.

For the bonus, the same mechanics apply, and the player will have to choose between the options, and to deal with that event. Since it's fictional, there is no correct/wrong response, but instead, the player will get a possible outcome of their decisions.

In case of successful completion of the minigame, a short 3D animation will be shown, with more facts about that the challenge.

During the entire game, player will be getting the correct answers/explanations and learning about all the challenges he faces.

The following open NASA websites will be used to create real like challenges to the players. The data will also be used to provide the correct answers and explanations about the hazards.

https://science.nasa.gov/biological-physical/programs/space-biology

https://www.nasa.gov/twins-study

https://three.jsc.nasa.gov/#section=main

https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/

All team members never participated on a Nasa Space Apps hackathon before. That means it was a learning for everyone.

The biggest inspiration for our team was that everyone is a space travel and NASA passionates, and some of of have kids. That´s why we choose this challange.

While young, for the most of us, the biggest dream was to be an Astronaut (or a soccer player).

During the entire project workout sessions, new ideas arrived, and we adatpted ourselfs to achieve the minimum acceptable level of details (for us) in the timeframe we had.

All 3D models (avatar, player, spaceship, ingame) and other designs are original work.

Video footages made with videos from Envato.

We would like to thank our families for the support during the 2 days we had to neglect them, working non stop.

We also would like to thank Marcos Linhares for all the help and mentoring

Adobe Premiere

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Illustrator

Envato

Azure

Go Daddy

Porkbun

#game #spacetravel #hazards #awesome #mars #trailtomars #canyoukeepyourcrewalive

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.