Food Focus (Boston)

(Click screenshot to download.) Food Focus was designed to educate users about the wide variety of available healthy food options in a fun and engaging way.  Press the spacebar to start and a macro food photo emerges.  Players have to guess what food the close-up shot depicts before the clock ticks down 20 seconds. Players must make their answer choice by pressing 1, 2, or 3 on the keyboard. An encouraging child voice will let you know if you choose correctly.  A message also appears on the screen.

Clues, chosen randomly from a nutrient database subset, emerge at the bottom of the page at the 10 and 15 second marks to help players determine the correct answers.  Player scores are shown after each shot and finally a click of the space bar reveals the larger view of the macro food picture. The game includes 25 photo choice sets. The nutrient database contains information from the Food Display Table and the larger USDA nutrient database for calories, protein, fat, sodium, calcium, potassium, Vitamin A, and Vitamin C.

Credits: Catherine Frederico (Game Design), Darius Kazemi (Programming), Everett Sawyer (Audio). Special thanks to DnA 4H Group. Photos by Catherine Frederico and the USDA ARS Image Gallery. Music adapted from “Saturday and then” by kthuga (source: http://ccmixter.org/files/kthugha/25899).

Food Bots (Boston)

(Click screenshot to download.) A Parent or child will enter the food they have purchased recently or eaten that day into a “food diary.”  The entries will correspond to data within the food nutrition data sheets. A child playing the game will select foods that build a robot for them.

The robot’s abilities are determined by calorie count, how much of the food pyramid requirements are fulfilled, etc. Certain requirements correspond to certain robot abilities (fruits and veggies help wheels, protiens and dairy help strength, etc.)

The child or parent can observe how their robot lacks a balanced diet when it doesn’t work at peak efficiency. Since a robot with strong wheels needs fruits and veggies, if a child isn’t getting enough fruits and veggies in his diet his robot will always move slowly in all the games!

Credits: Jason Lee, Anna Loparev, Paul Calabaro, James Prince

Healthy Kids Maker (Boston)

(Click screenshot to download.) The goal of the game is to raise a 9-year old girl for a month, as healthy as possible with providing balanced diet and exercise. You can feed up to 3 foods for each day using drop down box for selecting food. Player also enters the exercise calories for recording energy expenditure.

The table provides the 5 main nutrition facts and calories from food as player select it. The table shows for each meal, daily cumulative, all-time average. There is also the daily target that is the recommendation for reference to raise the girl healthy.

To win this game, player needs to keep the girl healthy (e.g., making her happy, taller, or active) not unhealthy (e.g., stomach ache, purple tongue, and Kwashiorkor).

Credits: Russell Sasamori (Programming, Game Design), Yoonsin Oh (Art, Game Design). Special thanks to Mary Aldrich, Terry Aldrich, Margaret Aldrich, and Catherine Frederico.

Snack Zapper (Boston)

(Click screenshot to download.) Instructions for how to play are in the tutorial level. Game is incomplete, does not contain food data.

Planned for the future:

-More levels.

-Floating "healthy foods" will either provide bonus points or give special powers.

-Floating "unhealthy foods" will either subtract points or cause trouble to the player (slower horizontal speed, less time, etc.)

-Screen (accessible through the title screen) that displays each food featured in the game and gives nutritional info.

Credits: Jack Boffa

Steadfast Skillet (Albany)

(Click screenshot to download.) Chef Sheffe is having trouble in the kitchen. All the foods have turned into mutant monsters and Chef Sheffe needs to serve the customers. The player must help him run all over the kitchen and capture a healthy meal for the customers. To get a good tip, the meal needs to meet the customer's caloric needs, cravings, and include a balance of nutrients.

The player moves using the arrow keys and collects vegetables with the space key.

Credits: Justin Tolmar White (Programming), Greg Lane (Food Art, Audio), Jim Kane (UI, Customer Art, Data Mining Tech), Atira Odhner (Customer Art, Chef Animations).

Calorie Quest (Albany)

(Click screenshot to download.) To start up the game, either click on 'Calorie_Quest.html' or go to the website by clicking on the 'Calorie Quest Website Link'. The url for this game is http://www.cookieswin.com/CQ/. When you load up the website - click 'Share Location' when asked - this will locate you on Google Maps. Input your name, gender and age to determine your daily calorie requirements.

Collect food servings while filling each food group requirement before the day ends. One day is equivalent to 120 seconds of game time.

To Move, either Tap on the screen (if using a touch enabled device.n iPhone/iPad or touch enabled mobile device), click with a Mouse or use the Arrow Keys

 

Supported Devices: PC/Mac/iPhone/iPad/Google Android based devices and any device with a web browser that runs JavaScript and the Google Maps API. Sound and Music only works on PC/Mac.

Credits: Matt Nolin, Brian Shurtleff, Brian Buchner, Ian Stead.

Food Sweeper (Albany)

(Click screenshot to download.) Eat 12 food items without going over your calorie limit.

Clicking on a tile covering a food item causes you to eat the food.

Numbered tiles will assist you in finding food by telling you the number of calories adjacent to them.

Fill up on fruits and vegetables but beware of pizza!

Credits: Rob Chase (Art, Design, Programming), Erik Saulnier (Art, Design), Kelsey Saulnier (Design, Programming), Tobi Saulnier (Art, Design, Programming).

Farm Army (Albany)

(Click screenshot to download.) Farm Army is a turn-based MMO civilization-like game.  A player manages what their town produces, eats, who they attack, and can trade goods for a made up currency.

The plan for this weekend was to develop the production, eating, and trading system.  Instead pretty sliders that sync with the server and a bunch of art for it were developed.

Credits: Michael “Z” Goddard, Mak Mendelson.

Food Scape (Fairfax)

(Click screenshot to download.) You fly around a table eating food which give you calories. The objective is to eat the correct amount of calories before hitting a checkpoint while avoiding bad foods.  This will allow you to make the three laps as fast as possible.

Credits: Alec Fisher-Lasky, Kurtis Smith.

Untitled (Fairfax)

(Click screenshot to download.) The idea for this game is to get children off the couch and playing.  The main portion of the game is a skateboard race.  To speed up the skateboard the play uses a dance pad controller and simulates the motion of speeding up a skateboard.  This is done by having the player hit the right button followed by the x button which can be done by simply planting a foot and then sliding back and hitting the x.  The portion of the game that utilizes the USDA data is the eating menu.  Here the player chooses from 14 items what they want to eat. Each item has a energy level and several other levels that should affect the player, but unfortunantly have not been fully implemented.  The player can no longer eat once their enegy meter is full or will be overfilled by the item they are trying to "eat".  The idea is that foods that are good for you will better certain statistics and make the skateboard game easier.

Credits: Marshal Eaton.

Untitled (Fairfax)

(Click screenshot to download.) Up to 4 players will have to navigate a maze in order to engage each other in glorious combat.  However, their initial attacks are fairly feeble.  Players can ingest food in order to bolster their stats.  If a player eats a healthy food their stats are increased by a large margin.  The effected stats are based on the type of food ingested.  Players must be careful no to over eat.  If they consume over 2000 calories worth of food they will become sluggish and less effective in combat.

Players will use a Wii-remote to control their player’s motions and attacks.  The directional pad controls movement and the one key will attack.  Since Wii-remotes are required for play, Bluetooth is also required to play as well as the appropriate Bluetooth and wii-remote java libraries.

Due to time constraints the game is currently unfinished.  However, it should be fully up and running towards the end of June.  Currently only one player can connect and navigate the maze.  They can absorb food items but they do not have any effect on the player’s stats as of yet.

Credits: Joseph Zelibor III, Ian Barfield, Jake Scott, and Kyle Tenan.

Vitabot (Seattle)

(Click screenshot to download.) In Vita-bot you play as a fierce vitamin robot fighting the unhealthy food found in the stomach of unhealthy patients. Using your vitamin launcher you can destroy the terrifying unhealthy enemies such as the Burger Brute, Evil Coli, and the Dastardly Donut to restore the balance in the stomach and save the patient from a life of health problems and obesity.  Along the way Vita-bot will need help from healthy friends such as carrots, apples, pears, salmon, and many other healthy foods to not only replenish his health, but to make the patient better; however, the malevolent junk food fiends have scattered your health friends throughout the stomach so you will need to collect them all in order to restore the stomach to its former glory.

Credits: Caroline Berg, Maury Weiss, Rhodora Jacob, Daniel Riley, Ramona Lohman, James McDonald, Alex Lee, Katrina Jurczynski, Nathan Rinehart, Hammed Al-Tamimi, Samantha Arroyo, Benjamin Wheeler, Jordan Ewing, Adam Standridge, Marcus Keene.

Hemogobblin’ (San Francisco)

(Click screenshot to download.) Use arrow keys to move, spacebar to jump, and eat a healthy diet in one minute!

Credits: Angelo Hizon, Devin Becker, Drew Maier, Fern Heintz, Ira Fay, Kial Croom, Seth Robles.

Hungry Balls of Fur (Orlando)

(Click screenshot to download.) Hungry Balls of Fur is a match 3 puzzle game designed to help reinforce healthy eating choices in children. Feed your Hungry Ball of Fur good food choices--such as grains, fruit, vegitables, and meat--to keep him healthy and avoid feeding him too much junk food to prevent him from becoming sick.  Aimed for ages 9-12.

Credits: Abdul Siddiqui, Hassan Siddiqui, Hamza Siddiqui, Stephen Machalek, Chris Oltyan, Andy Hayes, Steve Emberton, Ron Dahlgren, Justin Macanufo, Brian Reilly.

Slim Pickin’s (Orlando)

(Click screenshot to download.) Welcome to your cafeteria lunchroom!  Design your breakfast, lunch, and dinner while learning good food choices.  Each choice you make will affect your daily calorie amounts, portion sizes, and overall health.  You will learn when to exercise, what types of foods are good for you, and how to balance your daily portions.

The objective is to pick the square meals a day that will add up to less than 2,000 calories per day and give you as many portions of the food pyramid as possible.

Credits: Cromwell Enage, Doug Oberndorf, Reynaldo “reybomb” Leon, Ross Rockafellow, Tom Long. Special thanks to IGDA Orlando for food and event setup, Helios Interactive for location and IT, Mike Wuetherick for programming consultation, the Siddiqui family for their 3D assets, and Mike “Heat Lamps” Bianchini.

FEED ME!! (Athens)

(Click screenshot to download.) Feed Me! is a game that teaches young adults how to balance their diets according to the food guide pyramid and encourages an active lifestyle by raising a monster using balanced meals and a training/battling interface.

Credits: Josh Clark, Kara Stanford, Allen Taylor, Jordan Lynn.

Ration Roulette (Athens)

(Click screenshot to download.) Ration Roulette is essentially a strategy game. You aim to please your customers by meeting their caloric requirements while effectively rationing out food in various quantities.

This game strives to teach both rationing of calories, how many calories are in certain types of food, and approach a better understanding of balancing nutrition.

Specifically, the game rewards players for (and ultimately encourages):

1. Understanding calories

2. Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption vs. consumption of less healty foods.

3. Making food group education fun.

4. Identifying and consuming proper portion size.

5. Increasing foods with high nutrition value and decreasing amounts of solid fats and added sugars ("extra" calories), and decreasing amounts of sodium.

Credits: Josh Marsh, Stephen Borden, Alliene Bouchard, Dorian Patterson, Jamie Sichel.

Mogi Eats! (Athens)

(Click screenshot to download.) “Mogi eats” explores the concept of balancing calorie intake with physical activity. The player will assist Mogi to make good food choices by dragging and dropping the food to his mouth. In addition, the player will have to balance the calorie intake by selecting exercises that Mogi can do in order to stay healthy.

Credits: Emily Pitts, Daisyane Barreto, Lucas Jensen, Daniel Floyd.

Aaah! Condiments! (Pittsburgh)

(Click screenshot to download.) We made an iPad game called "Aaah! Condiments!" - sadly, you can't play the final version there in Boston but Jia Ji will be attending the Games for Health conference with a functional, representative version.

Overall, the goal of the game is to capture foods by defeating them in a shake-out battle fest on the iPad. The foods each have their own difficulty level based on their calorie content. Whatever you do, don't let the condiments latch on to the food, or it will be contaminated!

Jump, Twist, Push, Pull, & Scream your way through a fun kinesthetic food game!

Credits: Sabrina Haskell, David Culyba.

Balanced Meal (Pittsburgh)

(Click screenshot to download.) Enter in gender and age to get daily caloric intake. See the calories you need to eat represented by a physical box. Type in food you like to eat. See that food represented by physical objects.

Size of food is based on calories per portion. Color of food is based on food group. Shape of food is based on food group.

Keep typing food you eat to get shapes. Click and drag to pile up shapes on the scale (build your own food pyramid!). Click Test when you think you've got a day's worth of balanced meals. See if it balances!

Credits: Shawn Patton.

Refridgeraider (Remote Participation – Grand Rapids, Michigan)

(Click screenshot to download.) Your child lost his lunch and the fridge needs to be restocked! Quickly grab the food that will give your child the necessary daily Calories to stay active while balancing the daily servings he needs to stay healthy!

SpaceBar: Jump | Left Arrow Key: Decelerate | Right Arrow Key: Accelerate

Credits: Foy Van Dolsen (Development), Cris Miles (Development), Jacki Boshoven (Character Art).

Balance in the Tray (Remote Participation – Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico)

(Click screenshot to download.) Use the mouse to shoot different types of food to the Waiter's Tray. Each waiter is bringing food to a different person, so to win the game, you have to get the right amount of calories by giving each guest the right diet on theirs waiter's tray. To know which is the best diet for each costumer, you have to look at the top of the screen to his profile; it includes all the elements that will make a balanced meal for this person.

When you get the right amount of calories and nutrients, you will get a check mark on the face of the costumer, but be careful to keep it, if you go over it, you may lose that mark.

There are products like liquor and some sweets that will increase your calories very fast, hence it will make them go over the right amount and you will lose that costumer.

You can follow the diet and also you can use similar products (instead of milk you can shoot the cheese), just be careful not to exceed the amount of calories, even with the good food.

Credits: Daniel Rodriguez, Oscar Ramirez.