COzy | Devpost

Inspiration

We wanted to make our game "COzy" to help teens realize that they can also have an impact on reducing/minimalizing climate change. Our inspiration was to create something like a Tamagotchi, where you have a pet and you can grow and evolve it. A cute little game that is simple, fun, and meaningful to the world!

What it does

You start off with a baby duck Tamagotchi/Character with their house. The currency that the game runs on is Eco-Points. To get Eco-Points, you must complete small tasks in your daily life like "Not running the dishwater when it's not completely full" or "Walking to school instead of driving". Even though these tasks may seem small, they do create an impact on reducing climate change and it helps teens have a sense of pride that what they are doing is helping the environment. You can also decorate your house and dress up your little buddy! Not only does Eco-points evolve your pet, you can purchase furniture from the Eco-market and Build your little character a house ! Aside from that You can also buy from the items shop featuring premium items that the player can buy with real money that will all be donated to charity helping global warming.

How we built it

Planning on a google doc of all the and interface layout and animations we will use
Prepping prompts for AI to build 3.Animations and pixels: All the pixel art was self-created on "Piskel" 16x16 pixels, the frames and the animations used for the characters where all self-made by drawing each frame.
Incorporating it all into VS code using Claude 4.0
Fixing bugs and constantly training the AI to work/ prompting it
Created a database to save previous games
Incorporating the animations and the Pixel Art 8.Created different features for the game with buttons that direct you to a pop-up page: Pet accessories, tasks, furniture.
Created a build mode where players can build houses for their little character! 8.Testing & iteration: we continuously tested every feature, fixed bugs, and refined the animations for smooth interaction.

Challenges we ran into

Before creating the pixel art ourselves, we thought that AI could just generate the pixelated photo for use. However, it turned out very ugly so we had to hand draw every pixel element in the game.
The edit mode for building in the house was not working the way we expected it to work, the images were turning out too small and the items disappeared before you could even drag them. However, after 1 hour of prompting, fixing bugs, and problem solving, we found a way so that once placed the furniture will be compatible with the house and that it wouldn't disappear.
Building the house. When we were creating the structure of the house, it was so ugly that even a poorly made Roblox game looked better. So, me and my partner trained the AI bot with almost over 10 images of how the house should look like until Claude understood that a house was not a piece of brick, but was an actual room. ## Accomplishments that we're proud of
The animation of the game turned out really smooth, the character can't fall off the cliff, and the character also goes at a reasonable speed too!
Fixing all the bugs ( I call this an accomplishment) 3.The whole aesthetic of the game was really cute and fun
In the end it all worked out.

What we learned

AI doesn't listen to you all the time
the value of planning, iteration, and collaboration.
How we needed to be very organized to make a big project like this
Time management was very important
I learned not only technical skills but also how to think creatively to solve problems.
Even the smallest creative details can be tedious, but overall that's why players want to play the game! ## What's next for COzy