Spica

https://youtu.be/NZGHIQrKUIo

https://github.com/spicaspc/mission-sirius-to-mars

Our game is aimed at young people between 10 - 14 years old, who are interested in space travel but don't know where to start researching. We are aware that nowadays many kids or teenagers are not attracted to science, and those who are interested might find the language of a scientific subject too complicated. 

Space missions are fundamental for understanding the universe, and for developing new technologies. These two items are extremely important in case our planet ever becomes uninhabitable, we will have enough knowledge and technologies to identify which planets are habitable and meet our needs, and eventually move to them. However, as much as we have advanced technology, space missions are still unpredictable and have a high level of difficulty.

For this reason, we thought of a simple and easy-to-understand game to captivate young audiences, that at the same time shows how important, arduous and even fun space travels are.

THE CHARACTER

Sprites made in Piskel

Our character has 3 progress bars of different elements:

• Happiness - determined according to the relationship between the crew. As you interact by chatting with them, the bar increases. When the character stops interacting, the bar decreases. 
• Health - measured according to the character's diet, hydration, and exercises. By eating well, hydrating and doing his activities, it will keep its health bar at a good level. If they are not done, the bar decreases.
• Energy - calculated conforming to the number of hours the character sleeps compared to its effort. If the character finds a balance between the two, it will have a good energy level, but when it tries too hard and has insufficient sleep, the bar will reduce.

TASKS

Tasks beginning cards made in Canva

Happiness - Spending a lot of time away from Earth is not an easy mission, so as not to get bored or, at worst, depressed, astronauts need activities that make them glad.

• Chatting with other crew members (+) - As the crew spends a lot of time isolated together, good communication and understanding between them is extremely important. The conversations are mainly about how the human body acts with space radiation, microgravity, and also general curiosities about space. 

Example:

J: Hello, player’s name, how are you feeling?

P: Hey Joe, I’m feeling good!

J: Great! Today we are going to talk about space radiation, do you know anything about this topic?

P: Not actually.

J: Well, everyone on Earth is exposed to radiation, but here in space the levels are higher because of Earth's magnetic field, energetic particles from the Sun and also because of the galactic cosmic rays. But you don't need worry, NASA currently uses shielding, radiation monitoring and specific procedures to avoid as much space radiation as possible.

P: Wow! I didn’t know that so much stuff could influence space radiation.

P: I have a question, what is galactic cosmics rays?

J: That is a topic for another day, player’s name. But I’m glad you are interested in this subject.

P: Thank you so much for the chat, Joe! See you later!

• Learning new abilities (+) - Learning new facts is always interesting, as well as avoiding boredom and boosting the astronaut's morale.
• Space Garden (+) - in addition to serving fresh food and helping to purify the air, caring for a garden has positive behavioral benefits, such as stress relief.

Health - A proper diet and exercise routine are very important for astronauts, as their bodies have a chance of being affected by microgravity and exposed by space radiation.

• Physical activities (+) - It has been shown that doing aerobic and resistance exercises greatly improves your health and can even help with balance and coordination.
• Nutrition (+) - Just like in real life, players won't have unlimited food, therefore, they need to ration their food supplies to survive the entire trip.

Energy - It is indispensable for astronauts to get quality sleep, and to be prepared for the fatigue they may feel when doing work in space.

• Physical activity (-) - practicing physical activities is essential, but it requires a lot of energy, especially if you are in another gravity.
• Water treatment (-) - when you're on a space mission, any and all liquids are recycled into drinking water, as water is a scarce resource.
• Space garden (-) - as with physical activities, taking care of plants has many benefits, but it's not easy!
• Learning new abilities (-) - studying a new language or improving your medical skills might make you happy, however, studying can also be tiring. 
• Sleeping (+) - to regain energy, a good night's sleep is necessary.

Whenever the player is going to do a task for the first time, there will be a brief summary about the subject and an image taken from https://images.nasa.gov/, and then what he needs to do in this task. In addition to the images, we used NASA websites to better understand the daily lives of astronauts and the consequences of space travel.

The ‘Trail to Mars’ project got our attention from the moment we saw it. The whole game idea seemed amazing and we were very excited to make this project.

We started it by searching about the aspects of space travel on NASA’s websites, and learned about microgravity, space radiation and how challenging it is to spend so much time away from the people we love. Then we had to organize the information and decide how we would use these facts in the game. 

When we started thinking about the project, we were inspired by some other games. We used the aspect of pixel art in consideration and projected the elements based on that. All the components were made by ourselves on the app Piksel.

We used C# to develop the base game, and some platforms such as Unity and Visual Studio.

As we didn’t have enough time to develop the game before the project submission, it is not finished.

• Pick-and-eat Salad-crop Productivity, Nutritional Value, and Acceptability to Supplement the ISS Food System - www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7896  
• Twelve Biology of Spaceflight Papers Represent Groundbreaking Work - https://www.nasa.gov/feature/twelve-biology-of-spaceflight-papers-represent-groundbreaking-work 
• The Human Body in Space - https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace 
• light Photos - VEG-01B Day 33 - Plants at Harvest - https://images.nasa.gov/details-KSC-20150810-PH-NAS01_0001 
• Pettit exercises on the COLBERT in the Node 3 - https://images.nasa.gov/details-iss030e132530 
• Study of the Effects of Spaceflight on the Aging of C. elegans (Space Aging) - https://images.nasa.gov/details-iss043e124204 
• Vestibular Study testing in Zero-G flights on the KC-135 - https://images.nasa.gov/details-s84-46948 
• Nyberg in Node 1 - https://images.nasa.gov/details-iss036e005718 
• STS-120 crew on Discovery middeck - https://images.nasa.gov/details-s120e007889 
• Por que a exploração espacial deve ser levada a sério? - https://gizmodo.uol.com.br/por-que-a-exploracao-espacial-deve-ser-levada-a-serio/

#space #educational #nasa #spaceapps #spacejourney #mars #game #trailtomars

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