Lease On Life
Lease on Life is a narrative-driven mobile game which allows its users to step into the perspective of a character representing those who are most affected by the United States’ healthcare policies.
Players make decisions in order to balance all aspects of their character’s lives, choosing where to make sacrifices in order to maintain their standards of living or advance their goals. Each of these decisions are meant to be reasonable and responsible; no choice is innately “wrong.”
The goal of Lease on Life is to advocate for universal healthcare by allowing for players – especially policymakers and opponents to a universal healthcare policy – to empathize with the people who they would otherwise distance themselves from.
You can view the project website and play the game at leaseonlife.katiejostes.com.
Lease on Life premiered at the 2019 Elon University Interactive Media capstone exhibition on May 21st, 2019.
It was also entered into the Serious Play Events Student Digital Game Award Competition.
Technology Used:
This game was coded using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery, with the addition of a JSON-based webmanifest file to implement the website as a PWA.
While any text editor will do for most web-based programming, I switched to Atom over Brackets once my game started to function as a PWA.
Some notable methods and/or guides that helped immensely with the game’s development are as follows:
- JavaScript’s localStorage API
- How to implement branching dialogue in JavaScript
- CSS Transitions
- jQuery Animated Number Counter From Zero To Value – Javascript Animation
- Twine, for drafting branching narratives.
Process
Research and Project Proposal
Download the full proposal PDF below:
Concept Development
SCRUM Post-It Note Game Draft
Design Brainstorming
Style Guide
Mockups
Note: These mockups were made early in the design process and do not accurately reflect the use of the final style guide (above).
Local Storage Functionality Test/Proof of Concept
You may view the webpage that I made for this test here.
Screenshots of some of my code for this test are below.
CSS Styling Resource
You may view the webpage that I made for my own reference here.
Story Drafting and Revisions
Iterative Development
You may view the game’s iterations at the following links:
Backlog Tracking
