COVID Simulator 2020

Beta version for Jamming the Curve jam submission, made in Godot - which is free and open-source under MIT license.

WASD to move, Esc to Pause.

The dynamics of an epidemic are highly non-trivial, and for this reason a lot of effort has gone into numerical simulation and then working backwards to try to get information from real data with a given model. In particular, a model should factor in the dynamics of transmission, recovery, deaths, or environmental impacts. Such a model would usually include a lot of complicated mathematics, including stochastic differential equations, continuous-time Markov chains, Kolmogorov probability equations, branching processes, and more.

For this reason, this game aims to inform the player of best practices, regardless of what the epidemic is or whether we have a model of the dynamics or not. Instead of telling you choices you should make to follow health and safety guidelines, the game shows you the effect of making certain choices, e.g. social distancing, wearing a mask, etc. It is short and sweet, and for me was mainly made for the purposes of mastering a few specific mechanics: tracking and updating probabilities, instancing different sprites on entering a level (depending on certain conditions), random motion, and particles.

Tileset assets by Adam Saltsman, at adamatomic.itch.io/jawbreaker.

The menu background is the same one I used in my 2D platformer; you can find a link to it and a collection of other assets there.

Everything else was made in Microsoft Paint, aside from the characters - which feature the Godot icon as a sprite.

My plan was to make the trails of NPCs also increase probability of infection, but for now they just serve as a visual of how the disease can spread. I plan to upgrade the trail to a Raycast to achieve this.