Posted November 21, 2025 by joshuaj1231
One of the key areas I identified to prototype for this project was the different health meters that would serve to demonstrate the pet's health. The idea for these four energy bars is that they would each slowly drain over time, and if any of the four reached zero, it would result in the pet's death. In order to refill these, the player would play an associated minigame - one each for exercising, washing, feeding, and using social media.
However, as the pet used social media more and more, it would affect each of the bars slightly while the other activities did not. The changes would be a slower drain rate and reduced total for the other 3 health bars, while the social media bar grew larger and drained faster. The intention behind this would be to showcase how as we become addicted to social media, it can start to take a larger role in our lives at the cost of our own standards of living.
First, to accomplish this, I set up a scene in Unity to playtest with. Each of the four buttons takes the player to a different scene where one of the minigames takes place, while this would serve as the main/hub scene.
Each slider represents the pet’s health, in the same order as the buttons listed. As time passes, each of the health bars slowly drains of energy.
When you press one of the buttons to switch scenes, then return back to main - the corresponding health bar is refilled (in this case, exercise).
If however, you select the Social Media button and then return, a few changes happen. The Social Media bar will refill to the max, while also growing slightly in size as the other 3 shrink slightly. In addition, the Social Media bar begins to drain faster, while the others drain more slowly.
At first, the differences are slight, barely even being noticeable - this is intentional. Part of the goal was for the shift to happen more gradually, so it would be harder for the player to notice at first. But in this case - note that the social media bar (the third bar down) is already lower than the exercise bar at the top, despite being refilled after it. Also, looking to the right, note that the bars are just barely beginning to shift. If the player were to return to the social media app, say, four more times - this would be the result.
By this point, the Social Media bar has not only outgrown the others substantially, but those bars have shrunk to a point where despite not being actively refilled, they appear more full than they did before. When playtesting this in-class, players did begin to notice the shift over time, however it took several instances of visiting and returning from the social media scene, which was the goal.