Plastic Planet
Houston, TX
2025, Senior, Interactive & Multimedia
Project Description: My website includes few sources of inspiration towards my final game as well as short descriptions of the struggles certain wildlife have to endure throughout their lifetime; the same wildlife are included in the main game. The game is located near the bottom of the website and starts at the press of the green flag where it then transitions into the intro. Here players must press the “Play” button to continue further. The intro then transitions into the player (or in this case animal) selection slide. Here players can choose which wildlife perspective they want to try. Note that the game doesn’t delve completely into the lives of these wildlife creatures but instead the specific hardships they endure when it comes to deciphering food from plastic. Players can choose between “Sea Turtle”, “Bird”, or “Krill”. While these three animals all face the same hardship of mistaking plastic for food, they encounter this issue in different ways. Sea turtles for example have a hard time telling the difference between plastic bags and jellyfish. Birds often mistake shiny plastic for certain bugs. Finally, krill (who are extremely unable to tell the difference between microplastics and phytoplankton) consume plastic regularly and produce nanoplastics. It is almost inevitable for krill to not each microplastics as there are billions upon billions of them constantly floating on the ocean’s surface. Each game type uses different input. For “Sea Turtle” players must drag their finger or mouse across the screen in order to dodge or eat things. “Bird” doesn’t include any movement and instead only requires clicking. “Krill” includes movement in all directions, and you can only eat by touching food. You are only given two lives, meaning if you eat plastic twice in one game, you have to start over. Unfortunately real animals usually die from their first major plastic encounter but for the sake of the game I’ve given the player two lives. I made this game using Scratch, an app/website where you can construct games using block-code, and while the code itself is quite simple, Scratch is meant for small, short games and there forth only allows simple logic. In order to make my game a little more intense I had to use more block codes to do more complicated functions which could’ve been very simply done in any other software. For example, Scratch doesn’t allow videos, so in order to make certain backgrounds move I had to convert my videos into hundreds of little pictures such that it easily animates when played. Once I had published the game, I embedded it into a website I made on Google Sites where I included all extra information about the game. I recommend this game be played on phone but any device works.
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Reflection
Reflection
When I discovered this year's theme I thought it would be incredibly easy. I'd done community volunteering before, worked on gardens, went to the park frequently. I had so many options! Yet nothing felt meaningful to me. Why? It was only months later in my human geography class when it started to make sense. We were watching a film "A Plastic Ocean" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAXGiXElX7w) in which people were examining the plastic consumption of animals and I was shocked! Fish, birds, whales, everyone has to endure the hardships caused by plastic. Plastic consumption is inevitable for so many! It was during this movie when it finally hit me: I don't have a meaningful connection to nature. If anything, my connection is my lack of knowledge of nature. I only ever looked at it as an aesthetic aspect of my life and while I knew there were struggles, I never thought they'd be so drastic! All information found is from the film; however, the game only offers a glimpse into human contributions not only to the ugliness in nature but also in humanity itself. Nevertheless, I hope my game reaches its audience, and furthermore, helps save us from this plastic planet.