I had an idea in the bath I want to write it down before I lose it. What about a game designed specifically to help with spoon management? maybe you start the day with 5 spoons and you use those Spoons to play mini-games. There could be a variety to pick from, like tile matching or puzzle games, rhythm games or simple platformers or tap games. Maybe you have an avatar you can upgrade with rewards from the mini games. After the 5 in game spoons are expended, the game asks if you would like to do a task IRL to get more game spoons back. You can assign a spoon value to the task that you create yourself, or to a task on a ready made list. After you have finished the task you get the assigned level of in-game spoons back. Perhaps users can sent essential tasks like basic self care things to give 'free' spoons? Those should pop up before other things I think, because high priority. Maybe you can send a friend a spoon if you post a positive note? A little corkboard that displays them would be cool. And if you can't do a task due to lack of IRL spoons, it doesn't scold you, just puts up something supportive/encouraging. Thoughts?
Interesting. Obviously it would be really easy to cheat, but people who are interested in improvement would probably play it straight anyways. The one thing I would need for it to be motivating would be progression of levels or missions. While I enjoy mini-games, if I'm not working to acheive something larger, extra lives/spoons mean very little to me. For example, candy crush has hundreds of levels, and beating them all keeps me coming back. You could possible use a points system to "buy" prizes instead of having levels, so the incentive is the prizes instead of level progression. But, yeah, there needs to be a bigger game goal I think.
Oooh yes those are good ideas. Maybe set a weekly goal that gives a special prize? For the Big tasks that drain the most energy.
There are a lot of things you could have to need more Spoons to buy.. you could also have them buy power ups for a small Spoon cost (like 1 or even half of one). One thing I'd like to input though is that I don't think it'd be a good idea for Spoons to ever buy things like Hints. I know nobody brought it up but it kind of popped into mind while thinking about things that that would be really frustrating at least to me personally.. get stuck on a puzzle, get frustrated, need a hint, need to do a task to get that hint, would probably just end up making me put the game down. If you don't want to go the 'need spoons to do more levels' thing, I think it would be nice to have that avatar idea or something like it? Needing currency to buy ways to decorate an avatar would hook a lot of people in. Maybe also something like.. you get a little room for that avatar that you can also drag-items-around decorate, and the decorations would also cost the Spoons currency ? People like dressing avatars up and also being able to decorate housing areas.
I like motivation apps but a lot of them fall short for me, idk why. Maybe if you do a task in under a minute it asks you to confirm again, just as a nudge if you are frustrated and inclined to cheat? I like the idea of being able to save up reward currency for avatar things, and also pets. Pets that will make happy faces when patted. It would need to start small of course, content being phased in with updates. No ads. A donate button if people like it. And yeah I was thinking that spoons are used to play games (interacting with the avatar is always available), and the reward for playing those games is gold - even if you fail a level there will still be a reward. The gold is used to buy avatar things.
* made long explainy thing. Reads newest post. Deletes long thing* Yeah, @KathyGaele that sounds good. Really liking how this sounds.
C: this seems like good incentive to continue learning Ruby Maybe a selection of different colourschemes for the interface so people can avoid nope colors. No gender locking on avatar stuff and the starter mannequin is a grey baymax-esque doll that can then be adjusted to a variety of body shapes. Ideally sliders but that would be very complicated I think. I like the idea of a Lil avatar hut that you can grow over time if you want. Hut > small shack > average home > large home. Once large home is achieved you could invite your friends to connect their avatars and make a little community, or buy more avatar blanks to make your own villagers. Eventually get a whole town with bonuses? Only able to customize the inside of your house though.
Idk much about the technical part of game design though :\ I can write and passably draw, will have to do some research. I would be super pleased even if I could just make a menu as a proof of concept thing haha
yeah... All the programming I know is what little I learned while playing with rpg maker. I'd be willing to help with the art part if it ever gets that far.
I've been sort of poking at learning coding with the end goal being 'I want to make small mobile games/useful apps for autistic/disabled people' but it's going to take me a very long time to be of any use on that front.
lemme see if I can summon at least a few hey @seebs, @albedo, @ADigitalMagician, @WithAnH, @whimsicalobservant, @Morven, @siveambrai, @Lissa Lysik'an - anybody have any ideas? (i totally didn't just go through the programming thread for names, nope)
And HabitRPG is actually opensource, iirc - you might be able to peek at that code and see if it's helpful. Sounds like a pretty awesome idea. Minigames sound like a lot more work to code than cute pets / objects, though - I'd go for the latter to start with, if folks are up for making pretty art prizes.
I haven't made games before, but I have done web design, and might be able to help with that if you get stuck. (I'd offer to help code, but I'm full up on coding projects right now, and probably won't have the cognitive spoons. Work wears me out pretty hard.)
Yeah, this is Habit RPG in reverse. Which isn't a bad idea, considering it's actually aimed at people who need to manage spoons. @Aniseed : If you like this project and think you can follow through to a decent minimum product, you could have this in a usable form in a couple of weeks. I am willing to mentor people wanting to do this where I can (Even if it's only in the abstract, considering I see talk of languages I don't know).
