[GUEST POST] Travel Buddy
Cayan Koh
TJC Student
Introduction
Travel buddy is a demo game that I have created to make travel planning easier to understand and easily accessible for those that want to start planning. I chose to do this topic as I felt that everybody travels at one point in their lives and this game would be able to make travel planning easier to understand and learn. Learning how to plan efficiently, as well as effectively, is a useful skill to have, making it easier to plan for future trips, be it a honeymoon, a backpacking trip, or a weekend getaway. At first, I had no clue how to plan trips but seeing how I may need this skill in the future, I decided to learn more about it, and to also share my learning with the players as well, by putting it into a game.
Process
I first started doing research on how to plan trips, I read up on other blogs posted on Google and summarised what I learnt from them. I also went ahead and asked my parents and relatives for some tips and tricks as well as to teach me more about travel planning in general. I realised how much there was to take into account when planning for a trip, like the budget, the number of people you have to cater for, and also to plan in a way that you can make the most out of each day, while still leaving time for other activities like shopping.
Game Features
At the start of the game, you will have to first go through the travel personality quiz. The quiz allows you to understand what kind of traveller you are and it also gives you some destinations that fit the type of traveller you are.
Afterwards, you will be able to choose to go through the travel planning guide or start on the planning challenge. The step-by-step travel planning guide addresses the different aspects of planning. There are also some places of interests and useful websites that you will be able to take a look at within the guide itself and they are placed there to recommend some places to go in the future!
The planning challenge, which I used the shuffle topic mode to make, gives players different budgets and scenarios to work on, and the best plan and itinerary will be voted for, giving the player that made it points based on the number of votes.
Achievements & Rewards
I added some achievements at the end of the guide and at the end of the planning challenge to encourage players and also to give them something that they can earn along the way to signify that they have accomplished the task. I also put in some rewards that can only be obtained by getting to a certain number of points through votes on their plans, to make it more engaging and also to reward the players that truly deserve it.
Conclusion
I hope that this demo is able to provide useful information and also to let players plan out trips while having fun and also to be able to learn from one another through viewing each other’s plans. I learnt many things through the creation of this demo, like learning how to use new features of the platform as well as how to plan trips myself.
Go check out my game!