Branched Out was inspired from the increasing climate crisis we are currently facing. With our similar enjoyment for video games, we thought a game would be perfect for providing users with the opportunity to play and learn about the affects of climate change will learning how to be financially responsible.

Branched Out is an interactive phone game created for both educating individuals on climate crisis and financial responsibility. Through our one click game, users are to guide a tree through the forest, collecting green icons that increase its health-bar while avoiding harmful obstacles, that decrease its health-bar.

We built our game using Ubisoft's API on Visual Studio using C++. As well, our visuals were made through adobe.

One of our biggest challenges was creating a health-bar for our game. This was a task that none of us had dealt with prior, on top of that we all had little to no exposure working with C++. By gaining help from the Ubisoft Mentors and using some trail error we were successfully able to add a functionality that increments and decrements when hitting obstacles.

We are extremely proud of our overall project and the fact that we were able to work together despite not being together in-person to create a working game! Having never met before, we were able to quickly divide the work that best met each of our skill sets while assisting each other on any issues that arose.

With Shehacks being completely online we had to learn how to work together virtually through audio calls and messaging. Along with that, we had to familiarize ourselves on C++ as well as Ubisoft's API to create our game.

If we were given more time, we would like to develop this game as an introductory step for young generations in managing their personal finances in relation to creating better environments. Through the game experience, users are asked to learn how to budget by spending their coins on things that are necessary and for good causes, while maintaining savings. Users are also asked to practice their patience in maintaining a sustainable eco-friendly lifestyle. The goal for these experiences is to allow users to apply them in reality.