Designing a game on personal hygiene can be a fun and engaging way to educate people about the importance of maintaining good personal hygiene habits.
The game aims to increase the awareness regarding personal hygiene by incorporating quizzes. These quizzes not only test the knowledge of the players but also adds to the knowledge base giving new information.
Hygiene Rush is a game with an approach called ‘Mexican Pizza’ – which relates to the mix and match of genres. Hygiene Rush combines two genres together namely ‘Tower Defence’ and ‘Quiz based game’.
Tower Defence
Tower defence is a genre of strategy video games in which the player builds and upgrades defensive structures (towers) to prevent enemies from reaching a specific point on the map. The enemies, typically represented as waves of soldiers or monsters, move along a set path, and the player must strategically place towers along that path to defeat them before they reach their destination. The player earns resources, such as money or energy, by defeating enemies, which they can use to upgrade their towers or purchase new ones.
Tower defence games can have different themes and settings, such as mediaeval fantasy, science fiction, or modern warfare. Some games may have additional elements such as hero characters or special abilities that the player can use to aid in defence. The genre is popular on mobile devices and on PC platforms and it is a subgenre of real-time strategy games.
The genre is known for its high replayability, as the player can try different strategies and tower placements to overcome the challenges in each level. It also requires players to think strategically and plan ahead, making it a challenging and engaging game experience.
Tower Defence in Hygiene Rush
Tower Defence in Hygiene Rush is implemented in a way that depicts the clash of personal care products such as toothpaste, shampoo, etc., dealing with a constant barrage of impurities coming in wave after wave towards our body.
Here the castle represents our body, the towers represent the personal care products and the waves of enemies are the germs/ bacteria trying to enter or tarnish the body.
The game incorporates different levels with each level having a theme to protect one body part.
For Example:
Level 1:
- Theme: Teeth/ Mouth
- Cannon: Toothpaste/ Toothbrush
- Enemies: Germs
- Castle: Body
Quiz-based Game
The quiz game genre is a type of game that tests players’ knowledge on a variety of subjects through a series of multiple-choice or true/false questions. In a single player quiz game, the player is presented with a series of questions and must select the correct answer from a set of options. The player typically has a limited amount of time to answer each question, and their progress is tracked through a score or a progress bar.
Quiz in Hygiene Rush
Hygiene Rush incorporates Quiz to test the player’s knowledge regarding Personal Hygiene and has a dual functionality of running the tower defence game.
The Quiz in Hygiene Rush has a wide variety of questions related to Personal Hygiene and covers different aspects of the same. The player will be presented with 4 choices for a question and he/she has to pick the right answer in order to start the tower defence.
Hygiene Rush: Gameplay
- The game window is divided into 2 parts, one portion shows the quiz while the other shows the tower defence.
- Each Level contains a set of questions related to personal hygiene.
- Players can set up the defensive towers strategically.
- In order to power up the towers so that they start defeating the enemies, the players need to answer the quiz questions.
- Each correct answers powers up the ‘tower’ which in turns defeat the ‘germs’ – enemies
- In order to defeat all the enemies, the player needs to answer the set of questions as quickly as possible before the germs reach the body.
- If the germs reach the body, it is game over.
Levels
The game has 5 levels which encompasses different body parts and ways for personal care along with a potential to house any number of levels in the form of DLCs or weekly release with new set of quiz questions and new level design for tower placement.
Art and graphics
The game has cartoonish, low poly, 3D assets with top down camera placements to make the game look funny and also appeal to children.
Rewards
Players can earn rewards such as virtual currency, badges, or unlockable levels for achieving certain milestones or completing certain tasks. Players can also earn real-world rewards such as coupons or discounts for personal hygiene products.
Digital Prototype
Designed and Developed in Unity, the game utilises Unity Playmaker for scripting. The Quiz portion of the game uses the UI design features available in the Unity. The Tower Defence portion uses a total of 8 C# scripts to govern the enemy spawning, shooting, rate of fire etc. Various components, technical and design, were integrated using playmaker. This reduced the need of large number of scripts.