Hospital Havoc (itch) (Cooper)

This is a one-player game featuring a frontline hospital worker during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The player must decide whether or not to accept or reject visitors to the hospital-based on information about visitors that are presented on a card. The goal of the game is to successfully manage the reception desk of a hospital for a total of five days while balancing out your own sanity, professionalism, the hospital emergency level, and the hospital’s capacity.

Our team included Seth Divine, a second-year emergent digital practices major, Akio Correll, a graduate student in Emergent Digital Practices, Cooper Rapp, a third-year computer science major, and Jennifer Armstrong, a third-year computer science and emergent digital practices double major. This project was built for a University of Denver, Emergent Digital Practice class:  ‘Programming for Play’. The overall goal was to successfully create an interactive experience with included moral questions.

The initial vision of this game was inspired by Seth’s conversations with his aunt, a frontline hospital worker during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was inspired by stories of having to turn people who needed care away because the hospital she worked at could not provide the necessary care at the time, either due to capacity issues or the heartbreaking issue of someone just needing it more. Seth felt that a hospital management game where you take the role of a medical receptionist working long hours during the pandemic would be an effective way to force players to contend with their humanity and to make those tough decisions to evoke emotion.

OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION OF THE CREATION OF THE GAME:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15POFETFz3VqRDiNaA4aLQ2v97HWoYLARUBFFIqJWMAI/...