CASLab

On April 7th, the School of Computing hosted our annual Creative Computing Showcase virtually on Hopin. Students presented the projects they’ve been working on all semester (and, in some cases, the whole year). Below is a compilation of those projects submitted for you to browse.

Games
Apps
Research

Games

Illuminus

By Will Jones, Julien Wei, Parker Jones

A 2D wave survival platforming shooter set in the dark

Your main goal in the game is simple… SURVIVE! As you progress through wave after wave of more numerous and difficult enemies, you must learn to conserve your ammunition and watch your health bar as the enemies slowly eat away at it.

Play Illuminus

Rodeo Attraction

By Jack Allen, Victor Coombes, Malcolm Newton

Rodeo Attraction is a 2D platformer set in the wild west. Players must use their gravity lasso, and their wits to send Jerry flying through the levels quickly, and save the day from the evil Jayree!

Thief! Jayree has taken innocent townsfolk captive! It’s up to you, and Jerry to save the day! Use your wits and Jerry’s powerful gravity lasso to send yourself through the levels quickly! Watch out though Jayree has been busy and left all sorts of traps for you to hit, and all sorts of alternate paths to get lost in!

Controls:
A and D: Move left and right
Spacebar: Jump
Click: Select metal objects to gravity lasso
Q: Push yourself away from the selected object
W: Pull yourself towards the selected object
Tab: Disconnect from the selected object
Escape: Pause

Watch demo of Rodeo Attraction
Play Rodeo Attraction

Losing Control

By Greg Wang, Brian Grigore, Sara Kwan

The game is a puzzle platformer where the player can use their controls as elements in their environment, such as platforms, but in return lose access to those controls.

**PLEASE PLAY THE GAME IN FULLSCREEN**

The basic mechanics of the game are that the player can move left and right and jump and they can use their mouse to drag their left, right and space keys into the game but doing so means the player cannot use that key to move. Our game is set in an abandoned testing facility that the player must attempt to escape using this newfound movement technology.

Watch demo of Losing Control
Play Losing Control

Kingdom TD

By Adam Grabowski, Alden DeMello, Sebastian Deluca

Kingdom TD is a tower defense game with a twist; the player controls a character whose position dictates where towers are placed, and character can also attack enemies and be upgraded.

Visiting the site provided will lead you to the main menu of our game. From there, you can access a tutorial from the options menu or just jump right into the game.

Watch demo of Kingdom TD
Play Kingdom TD

VIXI: I have lived

By Jayden Ting, Amy Hong, Eric Lam

Within each level, the player can collect items and interact with objects to solve puzzles, some items may require the player to win a mini rhythm game before collecting the item. After all puzzles in the level are solved, the player can collect a special item. The player can pass each level by scoring enough points in the main rhythm game by fighting with the boss NPC, the special items they collect will help them score higher.

Point and click to interact with items and objects
Use arrow keys or WASD for player movement
Use TFGH (T = up, F = left, G = down, H = right) to play mini rhythm games
Use arrow keys to play the main rhythm game

Watch demo of VIXI: I have lived
Play VIXI: I have lived

Psychokinefish

By Abbey Cameron, Brian Cho, Ximing Yu

Psychokinefish is an auto-scrolling arcade/puzzle game, where the player needs to use their telekinetic ability to control objects in the environment to defeat enemies and bypass obstacles.

Psychokinefish is an auto-scrolling arcade/puzzle game, where the player assumes control of a fish that traverses along a rail to reach the fish food that awaits at the end of the level. The novel idea of our game is that the player is weaponless, but they can use their telekinetic ability to control bubble objects in the environment to defeat enemies and bypass obstacles.

Psychokinefish features 6 levels with each focusing on one core level idea.

Controls:
Use ‘A’ to move left
Use ‘D’ to move right
Use Right Click to take/release control of bubble objects
Use Left Click to use the activated bubble objects

The player can take up to 2 hits from most enemies.

Watch demo of Psychokinefish
Play Psychokinefish

Quantum Debt

By Zach Lawrence, Brandon Lai, Cameron Wheeler

Quantum Debt is a 2D platformer where you swap through two different dimensions. In each dimension you face unique obstacles, and experience unique gravity, all while fighting enemies.

The controls for Quantum Debt would be:
‘WASD’- movement(Inverted in 2nd dimension)
‘Space’-Attack
The player must collect 1 Teleportation token and 3 teleportation energy to use the teleporter to switch between dimensions. The teleportation token will be somewhere throughout the map, while the player must defeat enemies to drop the teleportation energy

Watch demo of Quantum Debt
Play Quantum Debt

Icaria

By Shauna Tuinstra, Daniel Mitchell, Curtis Heinzl

Icaria is a platformer game centered around traversing a maze to collect as many diamonds as you can! But the maze isn’t going to make it easy, as it rotates frequently and some of the walls have a rather dangerous habit of disappearing and creating gaps that an unaware player may fall through. Good luck and enjoy the game!

Icaria uses simple platformer mechanics, use the arrow keys to move, jump, and double jump.

Watch demo of Icaria
Play Icaria

Space Race

By Daniel Dickson, Lucas Patoine, Kevin Zhang

Space Race is a 2D puzzle platformer where the player must use the direction of gravity to their advantage in order to complete levels.

A or LEFT, D or RIGHT – move left, right
W / SPACEBAR / UP – jump
LCTRL, LSHIFT – change direction of gravity
R – reset level from last checkpoint
ESC, P – open controls menu

After you complete level 2 it’s just going to keep sending you back to the beginning. Please note that we only currently have 2 levels! Level 1 is meant to be a sort of tutorial level, whereas Level 2 is much more challenging than the first >:)

Also please note that you can keep moving left/right while in mid-air! Do not let go of left/right if you need to jump across a canyon.

Watch demo of Space Race
Play Space Race

The Misfit Club

By Daniel Wagner, Jonathan Wilson, Steven Zhang

The Misfit Club is an escape-based game centered around your favorite childhood games but with a twist. Will you be able to survive and leave with what you came for?

The game takes place in an abandoned toy store which you break into to retrieve the store’s beloved mascot, Jeff the Giraffe. Upon arrival, however, you realize that something is very off. The toys seem to have come alive and are hellbent on protecting their king Jeff. Not wanting to leave without your prize, you challenge the toys at their own game, trying to retrieve the keys that they are protecting. These keys unlock the display to Jeff himself and allow you to fight him to the death.

Use WASD to maneuver around the map, and e to interact with the minibosses. There are no instructions for the games themselves. You will need to use the knowledge you have about the games in order to figure out a solution to escape. There is a dialogue between all the scenes which you can use space to cycle through.

Please note this is still a work in progress. We are polishing the game and actively working on improving it.

Watch demo of The Misfit Club
Play The Misfit Club

Debugging

By Jack Taylor, Simon Matthews, Cain Susko

Debugging is a game about managing your ant colony on highly competitive islands. You must use pheromones in order to guide your ants to food sources and to overtake other competing insect colonies.

Your main goal is to take over other colonies by sending soldiers to attack their workers or soldiers and to take over their hills or hives. An enemy hill or hive can be taken over by attacking it with soldiers; once defeated it consumes one soldier to convert it to your colony hill. You win the game once all enemy hills or hives have been taken over. You must collect food in order to produce more ants to complete this task. Your ants have little agency but they do smell for pheromones in front of them that you can create with your mouse.

There are 4 main types of pheromones in the players colony:

Food pheromones (green) – the ants put these down when they find food and are on the way back to the hill.
Home pheromones (blue) – the ants lay these down when they are searching for food to find their way back to the hill.
Guide pheromones (purple) – the player uses these to guide the ants to food sources and away from danger.
Attack pheromones (red) – these are produced by the player in order to guide soldiers to enemy colonies or defend your own colony. Workers also lay these down when they collide with insects from another colony in order to attract soldiers in the area.

Controls:

The x in the top right closes the game
The floppy disk restarts the game
Workers and Soldiers can be produced by pressing the corresponding buttons at the bottom of the screen. Workers cost 3 food and soldiers cost five.
You can set your colony to produce a mix of workers and soldiers automatically by toggling the Auto button at the bottom of the screen.
Hold Left Click and Drag: paint guide (purple) pheromones for your workers to follow.
Hold Right Click and Drag: paint attack (red) pheromones for your soldiers to follow.
Hold Middle Mouse Button: Delete a circular area of pheromones to remove unwanted pheromones or help ants stuck in an ant mill (following each other in an infinite loop).
WASD: Move the camera around the map.
Scroll wheel: zoom the camera in and out.

Additional Notes:

Try to create smooth circular loops of pheromones that avoid possible collisions in order to successfully retrieve food. A figure eight pattern around your colony and food source is often very effective.

Make sure to keep your workers defended with soldiers as they are helpless.

Don’t underestimate the fire ants as they spread rapidly.

While this game is playable, there are still many features in development and several known bugs that impact gameplay from time to time. Have fun experimenting with the ants but keep in mind that many major features were excluded in this demo due to their partial implementation.

We hope you enjoy Debugging as much as we enjoy making it!

Watch demo of Debugging
Play Debugging

Space Cat Space Crash

By Liv Elliott, Edwin Moreno, Dajung Yoon

“Space Cat. Space Crash.” is the integration of adventure into a puzzle game. While the main objective of the game is to solve the puzzle by completing the spacecraft, this is not the only challenge that the player must face. When solving a puzzle, players use their problem solving skills in order to complete it in a timely manner. However, in “Space Cat. Space Crash.”, the player’s hand-eye coordination skills are also tested, as they must use it to avoid obstacles and collect oxygen bubbles. Forcing the player to go on a treacherous adventure in order to solve the puzzle is what makes the idea of “Space Cat. Space Crash.” novel. The player must work for everything in order to successfully beat the game.

As the player enters the game, they will be met with a tutorial scene, where they will be familiarized with the game mechanics. Players practice controlling Space Cat’s movements with the W, A, S, and D keys. Once the player is comfortable, they will press the “Start Mission” button, which will transfer them to the main game scene.

Players will immediately notice the UI elements around the border of the screen. These elements include the player’s hearts (representing lives), and their oxygen tank (representing oxygen level). Players must refer to these game objects in order to determine how many lives and how much time they have left in the game.

Around the map, players will find two types of collectible objects, with the first being oxygen bubbles. Players can collect these bubbles, which will replenish their oxygen supply back to one minute. This will give the player more time to complete the game without losing lives. The second type of collectable object is the puzzle pieces. These pieces must be collected in order for the player to progress on solving the final puzzle.

Rules:

Collect all six of the spaceship puzzle pieces
Collect air bubbles to replenish the oxygen supply
Avoid the moving asteroids around the map while
Solve the puzzle in order to complete the level

Watch demo of Space Cat Space Crash
Play Space Cat Space Crash

Dicer

By Sebastian Huber-Oikle, Connor Keefe, Drake Li

Dicer is a fantastical gambling game inspired by blackjack. The main goal of the game is to gain as much money as possible through betting on Dicer, in order to purchase the bar and win.

The game is a fantastical gambling dice game inspired by blackjack but the goal is to achieve a target sum value with your dice while working with some additional constraints.

This game draws most of its inspiration from blackjack. The difference being – it was adjusted to work with six-sided dice. What is novel with this game is the probabilities are very different. In blackjack you have 4/13 cards in the deck equalling one value and cards in the game are taken without replacement. This makes any card you do or don’t get mean something in terms of the probability of different outcomes. In the dice game, everybody has an identical chance of achieving the same sets of dice, so the strategy is simply to look at your own dice and determine the probability of a bust if you roll another dice or the probability of achieving a value close to or of the target value in the game. This game will allow players to formulate strategies based on their own probability calculations and test these strategies out against different level automated strategies. In addition to this unique opportunity to formulate and implement different strategies, the dice game has a few twists involving different value pairs that create many different possible outcomes you have to consider when deciding if you want to roll another dice or not.

Watch demo of Dicer
Play Dicer

Monkey Marathon

By Andrew Hunter, Navin Pandey, Lucas Papadatos

“Monkey Marathon” is a top-down shooter with progression upgrades, where the player’s objective is to travel as far as possible while killing or avoiding guards that are trying to stop the player.

“Monkey Marathon” is best described as a top-down shooter with infinite level generation and progression upgrades. In this game, you will play as a monkey who is trying to escape a laboratory where the monkey has been experimented on. Starting from the bottom floor of the laboratory, the monkey’s goal is to reach the roof to escape. However, in the actual gameplay, there are infinite floors the player can traverse and never reach the roof. Regardless, the player’s goal is to run as far as possible while having to fight or sneak past guards trying to stop them. Throughout their play-through, the player will earn gold from collecting it throughout the map, as well as earning it based on the distance the player has traveled in a “run”. When the player dies, they will have the option of using this gold to purchase upgrades from the store to help them progress further on their next run. The stronger the player gets with upgrades purchased, the farther they will be able to run, and they will encounter stronger and greater numbers of guards. When the player reaches the staircase going up to the next floor, this will act as a checkpoint, so the player will now respawn on this new floor when they die.

For more instructions, please click on the “how-to-play” button in-game. Also, make sure to press the full-screen button in the bottom right corner.

Watch demo of Monkey Marathon
Play Monkey Marathon

Tempo Tear

By Vansh Panwar, Kanchan Shrestha, Kaz Susilo

Rhythm based hack-n-slash fighting game where players try to set high scores on various unique levels with different styles of music.

Our game focuses on rhythm-based combat with hack-n-slash as the main mechanic. Once the player selects a level, they’ll be faced with enemies spawning from around them. They must use their mouse as input and draw a specific slash pattern to defeat their enemy. This pattern can be found above the enemy’s head. The goal of the game is to survive the entire level and set a high score. As you kill enemies in succession while avoiding hits and slashing on rhythm, you accumulate a score multiplier and gain more points. The player also has a health bar, if the player gets hit by an enemy 4 times, they die and lose the level.

Watch demo of Tempo Tear
Play Tempo Tear

Forest Rumble

By Adrian Chu, Adlai Bridson-Boyczuk, Anthony Galassi

The game “Forest Rumble” is a 2D level-based platformer that introduces a unique grappling hook mechanic that opens up a number of opportunities for the player to traverse a variety of levels while avoiding obstacles and collecting in-game items.

Set in the near future where the player plays as a tree spirit roaming the forest evading human poachers and finding a mystical artifact that would end global warming.
Similar to other 2D platformers where players are given the ability to transverse the space using conventional WASD movements, the game adds to that by having a swinging/grappling mechanic from different pivots and surfaces.

The experience it provides is mildly challenging but rewarding for players as players learn to utilize the grappling/swinging mechanic to overcome obstacles such as traps, poachers etc. The player wins and finishes the game by reaching the final destination as the levels become gradually more difficult.

Controls:
A, D: horizontal movement
SPACEBAR: vertical jump
MOUSE1: Attach grapple
E: Toggle between grapple mode and swing mode

Watch demo of Forest Rumble
Play Forest Rumble

Run Rufus Run!

By Cristiano Iacobelli, Mudra Patel, Ethan Mah

Run Rufus Run is a 2D fast-paced platformer game where player’s control a boy attempting to get home while trying to avoid being infected by COVID. Players are tasked with descending from platforms, jumping and dodging COVID particles, and collecting vaccines to slow the spread of the virus. Our goal is to provide education and entertainment to a young audience through the use of quizzes, facts, and realistic game situations.

Run Rufus Run takes place in a simulated COVID infected world, where our character Rufus lives. Help Rufus avoid catching COVID on his long journey home from school by avoiding particles and becoming vaccinated!

Watch demo of Run Rufus Run!
Play Run Rufus Run!

The Haunting of Billy

By Nicholas Duke, Ishami Rulinda, Isaac Schneider

The Haunting of Billy – A Roguelike Pellet Collection Dungeon Crawler

The Haunting of Billy is a unique blend of the recently popular roguelike genre and the classic mechanic of collecting pellets from the old school Ms.Pacman game. The game utilizes the level completion condition of Ms.Pacman of collecting all available pellets within the current area for each of the rooms in the dungeon . The setting is within the dreams of Billy Mitchell, one of the most famous gamers of all time. The game is an 8 bit dungeon crawler where the player can freely move around the dungeon rooms to collect the pellet while defeating and avoiding enemies and traps. The game has snappy controls where the player can move in the 8 cardinal directions as well as use items and abilities as they traverse the floor.

During the game the player will traverse from room to room collecting pellets and avoiding enemies and traps. Each time a player enters a new room the doors will lock in front of all doorways and they will only open once the player manages to collect all pellets. While traversing the rooms the player also has the option to combat the enemies. Once the boss is defeated the player wins. The player, however, can take damage throughout the dungeon by touching enemies or traps. If the player runs out of health points the game ends. When completing rooms the player will receive different items that can aid them in their quest. These items will have a variety of effects that can include, speed, damage and health ups, as well as different items to help with pellet collection such as a magnet or a time freezer.

The player moves around with the arrow keys and can utilize the space bar to attack. The “Q” key is used to activate the currently held item in the players inventory.

Play The Haunting of Billy

Hellbent

By Oscar San, Yannik Brunzema, Jeff Li,

Hello! Our game is a 2D roguelike action game with bullet hell-like elements. The game functions through several components: the movement, combat and hell bent state. There are two “modes” of movement, one where the player can move normally at a set pace using arrow keys and another through the dash mechanic which is a sped-up increased lunge in a specific direction. This movement mechanic can be used for travelling or more usefully, dodging and kiting enemy attacks/harmful projectiles. Players will be faced off against monsters and enemies in a stage/floor model in which the main goal of the game is to clear each room of enemies and progress to the next room, inevitably clearing the entire floor, however they must do this while balancing a self-destructive state of being, the Hellbent state. The Hellbent state functions as a high risk high reward ability/state which the player can enter by killing mobs, where the insanity bar reaches the highest point. This mode gives the player a fun and high risk experience where their damage will be buffed with the cons of losing health while in the state and vulnerable to taking more damage.

Instructions:
Players utilize either WASD or arrow keys in order to move the player from a top down perspective.
Mouse 1(Left-Click) is used in order to attack nearby enemies.
Mouse2(Right Click) is used in order to throw projectiles at enemies.
The dash ability is activated using the space bar and currently has a cooldown timer of roughly 8 seconds.

Story:
Our protagonist had lived a peaceful and fulfilling life in the mortal world. An endless supply of adventure and fun, with your friends everyday was filled with new potential. There was nothing that could stop you guys, maybe except for time. As time marched on so did everyone else. Once very close together, your friends started to grow apart. Some of them moved, some of them found new friends, and looking back you could see the horizon of childhood slowly fading away. Sometimes people grow and change, and friendships do too. But unfortunately, that wasn’t something he could easily accept. Tensions quickly grew among the group. The already remaining fragile relationships quickly turned south as arguments and fights with one another added fuel to the fire. There was one friend who stuck by your side though, your best friend. You two were the first to meet and establish the friend group. You two slowly grew it into something meaningful and now, you’re watching it fall apart, piece by piece. With everyone gone, you thought at least you’d still have him by your side, but even that would have been too hopeful. After a huge fight with him everyone has drifted away and you were left with no one. Unfortunately, he had experienced an even greater tragedy as after the fight he was killed in an accidental traffic incident. With your best friend gone and no chance for reconciliation, you drift into slumber filled with regret. However, upon waking up you are stricken with amnesia in an unfamiliar environment. Turns out you’re in hell, and in order to make it back to the human world, you’ll have to make it through the floors and defeat the bosses in order to gain a second chance.

Watch demo of Hellbent
Play Hellbent

The Legend of Splitman

By Sophie Ellwood, Pratyush Kaintura, Marcus Chiang

Play as a knight exploring an old castle and try to reach the gold coin at the end of each level! Use your special splitting and merging ability to navigate progressively more difficult puzzles.

In our game, you will be a knight tasked with getting the gold coin at the end of each room, having to navigate through an old castle with your walljumping and puzzle solving abilities. But that’s not all.. you have a secret talent: being able to yourself into two smaller clones at any moment! With your added ability, you’ll be able to split and merge your way through any obstacles and challenges you may face!!

Instructions:

press p to split press o to merge, experiment with what you can do!
you can merge vertically or horizontally, try merging while you jump over the other clone!
try putting the clones on either side of the block… see what happens when you try to merge! hint: this will be helpful in level 3
clones can roll through eachother/swap places by having them run together and pressing shift right before collision
finally try walljumping, propel yourself off the wall in the opposite direction by holding the uparrow and right/left arrow
If there are blocks colored green/yellow, touch them with the appropriately colored clone to open the gate

First, try our tutorial to get familiar with the controls, then move on to level 1. Each level can be solved by touching the gold coin.

Play The Legend of Splitman

Kingdom Fall

By Keqin Niu, Shahbaaz Siddiqui, William Brown

Kingdom Fall is a side-scroller shoot ‘em up game that takes place in the medieval era. You play as an entity that has crash landed in this kingdom with the sole purpose of unleashing chaos into the world. You must achieve this task by using your abilities to take control of hosts and gain access to their weapons and skills to further your chances of survival and bring an end to the world.

The game Kingdom Fall is a side-scroller shoot ‘em up taking place in a medieval fantasy kingdom. The core mechanics are centered around the novel idea being the ability to possess enemies. The player plays as an entity that can possess enemies to take control of them and gain access to their weapons and special abilities.

Controls:
‘A’ to move left
‘D’ to move right
Spacebar to jump
‘X’ to begin possession (need to be next to an enemy and in base state)
Left-click to shoot (need to be possessing an enemy)
Left-click to raise struggle meter (while struggling for control)
Right-click for special ability (need to be possessing an enemy)

Play Kingdom Fall

Our Way Home

By Renjie Liao, Zhihan Hu, Judy Zhu

Our Way home is a game inspired by the adventure of international students who are trying to get home during the pandemic. A country currently has a strict entry policy and requires multiple covid tests before boarding. In order for players to experience the tough journey of international students, we designed the character to achieve the goal of returning home by getting to the testing site and get a negative COVID test result on time. On the way to the testing site, the player can collect masks while avoiding contact with people on the street and keeping the health progress bar in an uninfected state. The mask will reduce the deduction of the player’s health but only last for a period of times. The player will lose the game if the player contacts with too many people on the street, or when time runs out.

As we enter the two-year mark of living with COVID-19, the whole world has experienced an overwhelming increase of mental illnesses based on feelings of anxiety, restlessness, and isolation. With counsellors already overwhelmed with the number of clients they encounter, video games can provide temporary relief to those who cannot get access to external help. In a society that is becoming more accustomed to the daily use and implementation of video games, it becomes important to consider how our games will affect people to make the right decisions. Video games can provide a viable, affordable, and accessible solution to this issue, especially when the game’s plot is closely related to our lives. Players can find similar experiences in the game’s story.

At the moment, China is the only country in the world that still restricts its nationals from returning to their homeland with complicated and cumbersome return procedures, which is a unique experience. There were approximately 150,000 Chinese international students studying in Canada in 2020. At a time when the pandemic is easing in China, and the virus is spreading all over the world. Some of them choose to return home to avoid the infection, some choose to return because of pressure from their families, and some have to return because their visas are expiring or their studies are over. With the pandemic still severe and the increasing restrictions China has placed on those entering the country, Chinese students will face many challenges.

As a player, you will play the character of an international student in this game. Your goal is to make sure that you get negative for the COVID test on time so that you can take the plane to arrive home as planned.

You can achieve the goal by collecting masks, avoiding NPCs on the street, and keeping the health progress bar in an uninfected state while reaching a certain destination.

Watch demo of Our Way Home
Play Our Way Home

Lost N Panic

By Allen Geng, Mukun Liu, Elaine Wu

This game is a maze game with the element of darkness, with a npc following you, either you or your npc dies will end your game. Your follower goes crazy sometimes and may step in traps, the game also ends when the follower is too far away from you for a long period of time. There are random trap objects around the map that can either hurt you or help you, there are a total of 2 maps and you can find your goal for this trip at the end of the second one.

The maze starts with darkness, there are torches that you can interact to lit up and it will stay lit up for a long duration. There are traps around the maze that you need to beware of, and some healing items for you, you need to be careful getting near them when your follower have a low sanity. Your follower has two bars, which are shown on the top of the screen, when you step into traps you will instantly die, but when your follower steps into a trap her health will drop, her health also drops constantly so you cant stay at one place forever, there are items that can heal her too, you can find them in the maze. The center of game play, her sanity bar, it is the blue bar on the top, when this drops to zero your follower will go crazy, and run around aimlessly, to counterplay that you must pick her up before or during her crazy faze(it might be hard to catch her).

Watch demo of Lost N Panic
Play Lost N Panic

Surviving The Semester

By Chuyang Li, Weihan Xie, Xiaoran Zhang

This is a parkour game, players control the villain by completing tasks and get gems to get high score and reach the end.

Overtake the challenge in the game and get to the finish point as soon as possible!
We are still working on some of the details in the game, but have fun!

Watch demo of Surviving The Semester
Play Surviving The Semester

Dark Split

By Cyrus Bashir, Caleb Hinderle, Dharsan Ravindran

Our game is a 3D platformer where the player must use the ability to switch dimensions to be able to navigate through and around obstacles in the world. The player must collect all keys for the level before making their way to the end gate. These keys may be hidden on top of building where it is impossible to reach in the original dimension and the player must therefore switch to the dark dimension and different platforms will appear. However, after the player switches dimensions, more enemies will suddenly appear. If the player touches an enemy, they will lose all of their keys and go back to the spawn.

The player will spawn at the start of the level, from there, the player will be told to collect all of the keys and move to the exit. The player has one life in that if they are hit once by an enemy, they will die and respawn at the start of the level with 0 keys. The player can be controlled using wasd and space, and the dimensions can be switched by pressing the mouse button. The camera can be controlled with the mouse and the camera can be zoomed in and out with the scroll wheel. There are many different ways to collect the same key so the player should look out for easier or harder ways and plan which approach to take. There are also a number of coins to collect, these serve no more purpose than a score, and show how much of the map the player has explored.

Play Dark Split

Botanophobia

By James Gleave, Kayin Boadi, Jawad Ahmed

Gene Longbottom (or Botanophobia) revolves around the protagonist, Gene, and his endeavor to save the world from evil space-fairing plants. After the plant’s spacecraft crashed into his home, he found a mysterious gauntlet that allows him to shoot lasers and control time. Gene has the tool to save humanity, but there is a catch; he is a pacifist. He cannot shoot enemies directly, but he can ricochet his bullets off of other objects – cognitive dissonance. Gene has to march from his home through a dark forest and damp cave to the core of the alien hive to save the human race.

The gameplay can be described as fast-paced and requires the player to be quick with their reactions to dodge, deflect, and shoot bullets. The use of ricocheting bullets off thrown items allows for a strategy component of the gameplay as that allows for a higher score through the game’s “juggle bonus” (a multiplier of the score given by hitting multiple enemies with bullets reflecting off a thrown item).

Watch demo of Botanophobia
Play Botanophobia

Dodge!

By Haiden Smith, Shakib Absar, Isaiah Wuthrich

The game is a fun for all ages action platformer where using a single dodgeball the player must preform banked and precisely angled shots to take down enemies and solve puzzles.

To play the game you can move the player left and right using the a and d keys respectively, as well as jump by using the spacebar. You can also pause the game at any time by pressing the escape key. If you are not holding a ball you can pick up a ball off the floor or catch one that was thrown at you by holding down the right mouse button. If you are already holding a ball you can defend yourself from getting hit also by holding down the right mouse button. If you are not holding a ball and an enemy has one that you want, you can take it from them by jumping on their head. To aim your throw hold down the left mouse button and aim by moving your cursor, when you are ready to take the shot release the left mouse button and the ball will be thrown.

Watch demo of Dodge!
Play Dodge!

MiseryBall

By Lavi Ionas, Xinyu Chen, Ayaz Vural

MiseryBall is a 3-D platformer game that uses laws of physics and gravity to create a fun and albeit challenging gameplay experience for the player where the task for the player is to lead the ball through the tracks.

Play MiseryBall

SuperSpreader

By Sean Cullum, Gabriel Lemieux, Isaiah Kliger

move around and infect as many people as you can! press c to cough on people, v to lick the floor and b to sneeze. These all increase the sus meter, which will make you lose if full. you can also backflip and press p to lower your sus meter, but it raises party meter which in turn can end the game if full.

Watch demo of SuperSpreader
Play SuperSpreader

Viral Load

By Sudarshan Kumar, Christoper Iwamoto, Andrew Blazanin

Viral Load invites the player into an arcade-like experience with single-player 2D pixel-style bullet hell roguelike gameplay. Following a story that draws its thematic inspirations from the ongoing pandemic, the player gets to try their hand at survival, albeit heavily trivialized, from a virus’ perspective. The goal is to defeat all levels of the game without losing all of your HP. However, each level is designed by the player before attempting to defeat it. They have the option to place a minimum number of enemy objects and a maximum number of wall objects on the level grid, all of which is controlled by a level building grid tool and toolbar that allows the player to select game objects.

The player traverses the game world within the boundaries of the level walls, within which they create their own combat experience. The levels themselves are made of a set walled perimeter, with varying game assets and sprites based on the theme of the level. This theme is decided based on the player’s progression throughout the game, signifying their progress of infecting the human body as they engage different systems of the human anatomy. The game consists of basic keyboard controls (WASD or arrow keys) to traverse their 2D world, and the mouse-pointer + left & right-click buttons to aim at and shoot enemies.

Play Viral Load

Earth Hero

By Sehaj Singh Kalra, Junyang Pan, Bailie Geddes

The game is a platformer type game based in space as the avatar character attempts to save a spaceship that has gone rogue causing danger to earth. The AI quickly learns and adapts to the players abilities trying to out play the player changing the difficulty depending on the players strategy. This creates a unique game player to every different player!

The in-game AI works by using a Bayesian network. Bayes net is a probabilistic model that represents a set of variables and their conditional dependencies using a directed acyclic graph. Throughout the level, we collect data on how the player moves and interacts with the enemies, traps and platforms, and we use that data to build the next level by feeding it into our Bayes net.

The player has access to three abilities they can gain and choose to use from. Their first ability is hacking, which will allow them to disable a trap for 2 seconds. This would help the player cross challenging areas with multiple traps. Their second ability is stun, which will stun an enemy that they are facing. The enemy will be stunned for 2 seconds which will give the player an opportunity to hit them. The enemy recovers from the stun as soon as they are hit, or when the 2 seconds are over. Third and final ability that the player will have is a long jump. This jump will allow the player to move through the level faster and avoid multiple traps at once.

Controls:
W – Jump
A – Move Left
D – Move Right
Space – Shoot
J – Stun Enemy
K – Hack Trap
L – Long Jump

Play Earth Hero

Babushka’s Beet Run

By Lindsey Kelly, Ethan Fung, Sam Zhang, Nathalie Frenette

Babushka’s Beet Run is a musical runner game that uses Spotify integration to provide track analysis used in combination with procedural generation to create a unique gameplay on a song-to-song basis.

Use W to jump, A and D to move left or right. Please use Chrome or Firefox browsers, Safari doesn’t work well with our game.

The game draws inspiration from runners such as Subway Surfer and Temple Run, and rhythm games such as HarmoKnight and Rhythm Heaven.

Play Babushka’s Beet Run

Apps

Binobooks: The Automation for Customized E-Book

By David Isfeld, Yixuan Fan, Matthew Isfeld, Amaar Jivanji, Ziyu Yang

BinoBooks aims to address these issues by creating personalized e-storybooks for parents and their young children. The stories will be designed in a way that allows parents to explain complex topics such as COVID-19, gender expression, body image, racism and more. Character customization will enable children to engage with the content in more meaningful ways by seeing a representation of themselves and their identity in the stories they read. Our team aims to develop the BinoBooks web library and automate BinoBook’s existing time consuming process of making changes manually into the book. Our team will build customizable forms on the website which will integrate user input directly into the text and images of the book. The web application should also allow parents to preview the book or customized character and have a payment platform so parents can purchase the book online. Once purchased, the customer should get an electronic copy sent to their email and a secured database will be needed to keep records of BinoBook orders.

Binobooks: The Automation for Customized E-Book

Real-time Full-Stack Development for a Healthcare Web Application

By Armaan Merchant, Lars Breski-Thompson, Leoariel Roberts, Nils Tuerling, Pradnya Sadhu Putra

WaiveTheWait is a virtual waiting room solution to replace physical waiting rooms. Patients are communicated with by texts and a web app for when they have to leave to reduce the time spent waiting in a waiting room. Our project was to streamline WaiveTheWait’s system to be more efficient and scalable.

WaiveTheWait is a virtual waiting room solution to the inefficiencies caused by physical waiting rooms.
Traditional waiting rooms are inefficient, patients have to depart for their appointment regardless of whether their doctor will be ready to see them or not at their appointment time. With WaiveTheWait, patients are texted in the morning with a link to a web app. They can input their location and commute type. The system keeps track of delays at the clinic so the system texts the patient when they have to leave for their appointment.
The goal of our project was to generally streamline the system and increase scalability, modifying the system’s backend and cloud sides. On the backend, we altered the architecture such that adding clinics is easier and the number of needed servers were reduced. For the cloud we reduced the number of data stores, reduced reads and writes to their cloud database and introduced more efficient configuration. Please refer to the video or ask us ourselves if you’d like to know more about our contributions.

Watch demo of Real-time Full-Stack Development for a Healthcare Web Application
Play Real-time Full-Stack Development for a Healthcare Web Application

Little Forests

By Isaac Wen, Melissa Zhu, John Mahon, Xin Yang Liu, Jiaying Huang

Little Forests is a web application project initiated by Joyce Hostyn to provide an easier way to plan a compact, biodiverse forest without extensive knowledge on plant types and their attributes. This in turn makes landscape planning for homeowners and community members much more accessible.

The SoundScape Mapper

By Rango Zhang, Derek Moore, Haowen Wang, Alex Gadanidis

The “SoundScape Mapper” is a web-based, data visualization tool that allows users to submit their location and recordings for analysis and view them with the visual aid of a heatmap.

The ‘SoundScape Mapper’ is a way for users to view noisy areas of their city, or areas of the world from the comfort of their home. Users can create their own accounts, through logging in with google or with just a standard email address. Users can record and submit audio for analysis, along with their location, which will then be visually displayed on the heatmap.

View The SoundScape Mapper Poster

Animal Archive

By Sarah Labrosse, Anna Wood, Caitlin Mcdonald

Animal Archive is an online research database for archival animal research.

Animal Archive is an archival animal research database to share content between peers and foster connections. With the core capabilities of searching for publications, uploading publications, and making a research profile, Animal Archive is a great resource to foster historical research.

View Animal Archive Poster

Rapid Response Tool

By Matthaus Besier, Justin Granofsky, Aarti Singh, Lia Mason, Ben Smajlovic

A mobile-friendly web application developed for easily retrieving emergency contacts of students during field trips organized by the Queen’s Geological Sciences and Engineering Department.

The first page a user will see is the login page. Admins and Super-admins will use this page to login. If a user forgets their password, they can reset their password by hitting the forget password link at the bottom of the page. The Admin Accounts page is only visible to super-admin users. Super-admins can use this page to search, delete, disable/enable admin accounts, and create new admins. Creating new admins can be done by hitting the “Create New” button in the top-right corner of the screen. A pop-up will appear that prompts you to provide an email and a password for this admin account. The search bar can be used to search through admins in the admin accounts page. Super-admins can disable/enable accounts by hitting the “disable” or “enable” button next to the account they want to disable/enable. Super-admins can delete any admin by hitting the trash bin icon next to any admin they want to delete. The class overview page displays all of the classes you’ve created. You have the option to click into any class and the ability to create a new class or delete a class. To create a new class, click the “Create new” button on the top right, and enter a unique name for the course. To delete an entire class, click the trash icon for the class and confirm you would like to delete. This action cannot be undone. The class overview can be viewed for each individual class. You can search for a student by name. There is also the option to delete an individual student from the class. To allow students to join the class, click the blue button at the top of the page, then distribute the generated link to the students, where they can input their own information. The ability for students to join the class through the link can be toggled on and off using the switch on the top right. The student overview page is accessed by clicking an individual student on the classes page. This page displays vital student medical information including: Full Name, Date of Birth, Height, and Gender as well as important contact information including : email, phone number, address, and emergency contact name and number. To update student information admins must click “Update” on either Medical Information or Contact Information. They can then freely edit any field. Once an admin is done editing they can click “Save” to save their changes. This page is what students get sent to when they click the join link for a class. Here they enter in their name, emergency contact info, and any relevant medical information. This form would be customizable for the admin user, and would be specific to the class they’re joining. Once students have finished entering in the specified information, they can click “Submit” to submit their information.

View Rapid Response Tool on Github