Fresh Start - A Mindful Drinking Interactive Experience
- Miles Cumiskey
- May 31, 2021
- 2 min read
Fresh Start is an ongoing Educational Game project led by Dr. Yifeng Hu and Professor Josh Fishburn. It is a multidisciplinary public health projects aimed towards teaching college students 'mindful' drinking strategies through a narrative game, as an alternative alcohol education program.
All screenshots are from the 2019 build of the project. The project remains a collaborative effort, and does not represent the work of one student. However, pieces that I worked on are highlighted.
Publications:
Our work was highlighted by The College of New Jersey: https://news.tcnj.edu/2020/01/27/fresh-approach-to-alcohol-education/
The team also published two abstracts to the 2020 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference.
Programming Role:
The game is built in Unity, using C++ and a dialog engine called Yarn, using the Unity plugin YarnSpinner.
I served as a programming generalist, but focused on mini-games, debugging, and UI scaling.
My initial project was the 'Drink Pouring Game'
The educational goal of this mini-game is to teach people how much alcohol is in one 'standard drink', as defined by the National Institute of Health. A red solo cup is used for approximate measuring, and to give college students a frame of reference.
The game teaches through trial-and-error, with a focus on giving feedback so players progress with the correct amount of alcohol. It also serves as a visualization of a 'standard drink' for players.
I also developed a mini-quiz to evaluate user learning at different narrative stages.
Once again, the design is focused on trial-and-error, and players are not scored, just given feedback and new opportunities.
Artistic Contributions:
As a multidisciplinary team member, I was responsible for background design, asset creation for all mini-games, and assisting our character artist.
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