aaron vanderbeek

Good vs. Bad: Fats was created for the Project Go Game Creation competition put forth by MedRespond. The premise of the competition was to create a health themed flash game with a short play time and little replayability. It should focus on conveying important information on a specific health topic. Our topic was the discussion of good and bad sources of fat. Our game sets out to inform players which types of fat are good for you, which types are good, how the different fat types affect your heart, and what foods are common sources of each fat type. The intended audience is 6-8th graders.

Play the game. It requires Flash 9+.

The primary functions of the game are to convey information about what foods are good/bad for your heart and to be fun. We wanted to avoid lots of reading as the means of teaching, so we came up with an indirect way of conveying the goodness and badness of foods by centering the game mechanic around the concept of how a food affects your heart. The idea of the game is to reduce the number of fat molecules, or cholesterol, on your heart to as little as possible. It has been shown that eating saturated fats will increase the cholesterol on one's heart, while a diet that contains primarily unsaturated fats will reduce the amount of cholesterol on your heart. Fats are part of a healthy diet, but one must be careful to eat the right ones.

We decided to use a stylized heart to signify the heart of the player, and have foods flying around the screen to signify the foods one might eat. When a food hits the heart it is indicative of consuming that food, which has an immediate impact on the heart. Players must use the mouse to control their diet, by clicking and flicking foods around the screen. Clicking and holding on a food will tell you if it good for your heart or not. We chose to use a report card to indicate performance as something 6th-8th graders would easily identify with and compare against their friends.

Lead Designer: Came up with concept and gameplay mechanics, maintained design vision throughout development.

Producer: Organized the team, scheduled meetings, maintained communication with MedRespond and monitored progress during the 3 week development.

Art: Found and modified the pieces of food.

Programming: Edited Actionscript 2.0 for game balance and created end of game report card.

Sound Designer: Recorded, found, and edited all sound effects for the game.

Good vs. Bad Fats was selected as the 2nd place winner of the Project Go Game Creation competition sponsored by MedRespond.