LOSE WEIGHT SIMULATOR
Introduction
Genre: Simulation Game
Engine: UnrealEngine4
Platform: PC (Windows)
Date: November 2021
(All meshes and sound effects are from unreal marketplace assets, articles of browse the internet function are from Keep app’s article post. Videos on the television are from Pexel.com open source.)
Demo Video
Game Concept
Lose Weight Simulator is a simulation game in which you plan your day and decide what to eat, what to do, and what time to sleep to complete or win the lose 20 pounds in 30 days challenge.
Inspiration
In Adventures with Anxiety made by Nicky case, “Anxiety” becomes a living creature, and the player can interact with it. I was also inspired by the concept of how anxiety could affect a character’s behaviors and how the character would struggle against them.
As for the art style inspiration, I planned this game to be a daily activity-based simulator on a simple level. The player could play through by clicking on buttons. I wanted the gameplay experience to be clean and relaxing in addition to smooth game development. I was inspired by the art style of games such as penguin isle and Equilinox.
Why I Made this Game
.png)
Body shame has been generating severe anxiety and health concerns both physically and mentally, especially among women and teenage girls. Some decided radical methods such as taking harmful diet pills, being over moderated in eating, emetic, including myself a couple of years ago. So I made this game that simulates the process of losing weight. The central of weight loss is to create a calories deficit, either to eat less or to work out consuming calories intake. The unconventional method could be temporarily effective but causing severe health issues, anxiety, and depression would increase if the weight goes up or the outcome of dieting is not apparent. Balancing the character’s mental and physical health is the real challenge; failing on either side could cause dreadful consequences.
Content farms regularly propose tips about how to lose weight “in days,” appear slimmer “instantly,” and cover our “imperfections,” just like the image above shows. Those commercials behind taking advantage of anxiety and aspiration to a slim shape and selling the harmful product or creating other maneuvers putting up the propaganda that only “Skinny” girls are beautiful or acceptable.
I also made this game to remind people of the impairment that improper dieting methods could cause and how one could get anxious due to body shame. At the beginning of the game, our player encountered a mean girl who judged her body shape and caused the challenge to start. I wish everyone in real life could be brave and confident enough to slap those judgers’ faces and be their own very confident and fabulous self!
Research
I referenced the app keep’s meal calories calculation function for calories per portion in this game. The example screenshots are the calories of the cheeseburger combo and grilled salmon.
I looked up reviews of strong dietary pills such as DC and KALO from Thailand. The illegal hunger suppressant sibutramine is found in the prescriptions. Which would cause side effects ranging from headaches and asthenia to high blood pressure, heart attacks, and failed kidneys.
Therefore, taking diet pills and not eating enough are introduced as the most harmful choice in the game, which would cost a lot of health scores each time the player chooses to take them. Further, the cost will increase with the number of time the player repeat such activity.
Click the image to view the article
I referenced the article Media-portrayed idealized images, body shame, and appearance anxiety. This article was about how Media-portrayed idealized portraits detrimentally affect the body image of young women. The experiment result demonstrated in this article claims a significant interaction between self-objectification level and idealized body.
I interpreted it as the correlation between the confidence of appearance(including weight and body shape) and anxiety level. Therefore, in my game, I associate weight number with anxiety score, referring to this idea. So, the more weight the character gained, or the more weight she ate, the more anxious she will get.
Game Flow Chart
Game Mechanics
Main Camera View & Player HUD
“Go Eat” Camera View and Food Choice Widget
“Go to bed” Camera View and Daily Summary Widget
“Browse the Internet” Camera View and Browser Monitor
“Chilling” Camera View and Snack Choice Widget
“Workout” Camera View and Workout Time Selection Widget
Programming
Core code of Food Choice and Summary
Planning and deciding what to eat every day and meal is one of the core gameplay of this game. Two summary widgets contain food information,” Daily Summary” and “End Game Summary.” While ”Daily Summary” displays food the character has consumed in one day, such variables will be cleared when the second day comes. Therefore, I have to create another variable in the game instance that keeps track of all the food the player has eaten in 30 days that keeps updating after each meal.
After entering the dining table camera view, the player can hover the mouse on the food model to view the short introduction of food. Clicking on different types of food will add a sub widget to the food choice window.
Display food information in Camera view
Cast to Food blue print to get food name and calories per portion
The player can choose five types of food for each meal. Upon hitting the “complete the meal” button, the food information will be recorded and later presented to the player through a gameplay summary. Below are the blueprints of how this information is saved for both daily summary and end game summary.
Save Group 1 food information to Game instance
Save Group 2 food information using data structure
I created another vector variable in the endgame summary widget to display matching the game instance. When constructing the end game summary, the blueprint will cast to the game instance and get the associated index with information. By checking the food index, the total portion and calories of one specific type of food will be added together and displayed in the widget below and grouped into healthy and unhealthy food sections.
Example checking and display food information of Index 0 and 1
Adding information to the sub widget display
Core code of Random Articles and Videos
For the "browse the internet" daily activity, the player will enter a camera view of a computer monitor made by a 3D widget. In the web browser widget, I set up widget switchers so that the player could choose to browse fitness-related daily articles or purchase dietary products.
There are 13 different articles in total, and I wanted only one of those to be randomly generated every day without repetition.
The player will be able to view one random article every day and after the first time complete “browse the internet” activity, the next time of the day will only show the dietary product sales page. The player could view another article the next day, and the main code is shown above where I used random integer in range function and widget switcher to achieve.
UI Design
I wanted my UI design to be clean and straightforward to match the game theme and the low-poly modeling art style. So I just used the single color text, and background color with only opacity changed.
The title and the game's main goal are placed at the middle top for the main player HUD. Day and time of day are important information the player should be aware of; therefore, they are placed at the top left. Anxiety score affects the gameplay significantly. Thus, the progress bar of anxiety is set at the top right and changes color as the anxiety score passes a certain level, reminding the player of an apparent location on the screen. At the same time, the buttons for different activities are placed on the left side. Character comments belong to a lower level priority and are therefore placed at the bottom.
As for the summary widget, the general idea is again clean and straightforward and displays all the information that the player has to know. Priority of important information will be indicated by the color change of text or enlargement of text. Examples are the weight number, final score, harmful choice the character has made, and a red color blur when the character's health score is low.
As for the UI design for the browser, this is the most colorful widget design in this game purposed to simulate an internet browsing experience. But still, the design has to match the entire theme of simple and clean color and modeling. I referenced the website search page such as “Google” for the home page design.
Showcase
%20%2011_15_2021%2012_09_39%20PM.png)
%20%2011_15_2021%2012_07_12%20PM.png)
%20%2011_15_2021%2012_08_17%20PM.png)