Hot Air!

Idea & introduction

An educational game with the goal of teaching the player more about mathematics, though it can be switched to other subjects with ease. The player is asked a question, which they answer by clicking one of the four buttons at the bottom of the screen. Answering correctly builds up a streak and increases their score, whereas answering incorrectly resets the streak and decreases the time left to answer questions.

The project was developed by a team of six people, and I focused mostly on the coding.

Technologies used

• Coded in Unity using C#
• An online backend system handles the login and leaderboard functionality
• Used built-in features to create the menus, adding code where necessary
• Art, audio and sprites from Kenney assets and other sites
• The rest of the art was made by our team

Notable features

• PlayFab backend providing a safe login/sign-up system
• An online leaderboard that updates with each player’s highest score
• Full menu system, including login, main menu, options, leaderboard, game and more
• Randomly generated maths questions
• Sound effects throughout the game
• Full options menu allowing players to change their game preferences
• Help menus throughout the game to guide players through the menus
• Browser-based deployment of the game on itch.io

Conclusion

I had become very familiar with Unity through my previous projects, so this project was more complicated but also ended up very refined. As I handled most of the development, I made sure the code behind it could easily be swapped to cover a different subject or language, or whatever other changes and ideas someone might have.

Gamifying learning is something many developers and companies have got involved with, and our team’s attempt at it required us to be creative with an idea that has been done many times before.

Files

The game files are available on GitHub, and the game can be played for free on itch.io.

There is also a Windows build, but the browser version made it redundant.