Let’s Eat Healthy!… And have fun with it!

This is for a uni assignment 😂😂

Eating healthy can be such a chore sometimes, believe me I’m a big culprit! I mean who can blame us when there is so much packaged and processed food out there around us, widely advertised and glamorized, notably cheaper than healthier options and often just simply convenient?!

Buuuut eating healthy and looking after our well being is of paramount importance and something we must be actively seeking to do in order to live a longer, more fulfilled life.

I have recently been trying out a shift from a normal diet of being able to eat everything, to cutting out meat as often as possible, and more recently, dairy. Honestly, it has not been as difficult as I imagined it would be, however the only challenges I am facing is the decline in convenience with these cuts and a price increase!

For instance, going into Pret A Manger to grab a quick, easy lunch is a lot harder considering the majority of their meals contain either meat or cheese, therefore making it a longer process and more to think about. Purchasing products such as chocolate or ice cream is significantly harder when there is often only one or two dairy free options, and the price tends to be a lot higher (although technically I shouldn’t really be suggesting these foods on this “healthy” post should I…shhh).

Anyway, with my new health conscious mind, I devised an idea for an educational idle video game in order to help promote healthy eating. The idea came to me when eating my way through too much cheese and chocolate, so dairy products, during my time in Austria recently, and realizing that this this was probably not the healthiest decision, especially after getting a tummy ache!

The game was inspired by the popular idle smartphone game, Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick, 2010). Considering the biggest video game user age is between 18 and 35 (Emarketer, 29 April 2015)*, this is primarily the audience I also would aim to target since this age bracket is a vital age to educate on the benefits of healthy eating. This age group is often a student age with not the highest income, and therefore convenience shopping is of course a big part of their diet. Further educating on a healthy diet via fun games could be a fun and possibly effective way to help improve diets and get people actively thinking, even subconsciously!

It was also partly inspired by the rather grotesque video game, “Who’s Your Daddy” (Joe Williams, 2015), a multiplayer game in which the baby gravitates toward the dangerous objects, inevitably ending in consequences, whilst the father aims to rescue the baby.

My game idea has a similar concept to the Fruit Ninja game, whereby items drop from above, both good and bad, and the aim is to catch the good ones and avoid the bad ones, or you suffer the consequences. Since I only have a low budget and not all of the technical skills ofa fully fledged game creator, I had to simplify the game, however I will explain my initial idea.

Basically, the idea I envisioned with a higher budget and more skills, was to have human characters which the players control to move toward the healthy items and away from the unhealthy ones. Upon catching healthy items in their mouth they receive points, however when unhealthy items are caught, the character expands, similar to a balloon, until it bursts when too many unhealthy foods have been caught. In this aspect it should relate to the game “Who’s Your Daddy” with the consequence from the wrong food, and satisfy the violent, grotesque game seekers, however remaining G rated and not highly graphic!

The game would also ideally include different levels, each one progressively getting harder with distinguishing what is and is not healthy, making it more of a thinking process and more educational.

Click here to access the game!

I hope you enjoy this simple game and maybe it will help inspire you to stay healthy!

Mel xx

Game created on Scratch, scratch.mit.edu

*Emarketer, 29 April 2015, https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Video-Gaming-Evolves-Whos-Playing/1012413