t s i t r a d e r u t a e f
E N I T FAUS G N A W Faustine Wang combines her many passions of art, technology and service to make lasting impacts on the world
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he video game opens with a screen of a cute kangaroo in a grassy field. The simple, blocky art style is paired with a light and energetic tune playing in the background as you navigate through the simple interface. Scrolling through the list of animal characters, a customized placard accompanies each animation, detailing information about themselves, such as names and special moves. After making a selection, your chosen character is transported to an open field with floating platforms and stands in front of an opponent. Then, the game immediately begins. You effortlessly shuffle and jump using the arrow keys with the objective to jump on the other player’s character. The losing character disappears and the winner’s animal is enlarged and celebrated with triumphant graphics.
This is the indie game “Bounce Battle,” created by senior Faustine Wang in mid-August. Wang began developing her artistic abilities as a toddler with markers and scratch paper always in hand, making doodles. As she grew older, art became an increasingly important outlet. “I’ve seen it as a source for me to document my imaginations and create something out of my daydreaming,” Wang said. Having grown up in the heart of Silicon Valley, Wang has been immersed in the world of technology her whole life and more recently developed a fascination with the connection between art and game design. She especially admires how video games allow users to closely interact with art and directly affect how it looks. “I’ve seen YouTube channels that
are dedicated to just video game art,” Wang said. “A video game needs to focus on functionality in addition to having it look good, so you have to be conscious of everything.” But prior to the summer entering senior year, Wang did not have a lot of coding experience. Taking AP Computer Science Principles helped her learn the basics of coding, which enabled her to pursue making a video game. However, Wang still had to supplement her coding experience outside of class. She watched tutorials online, which helped further develop her C# skills—the coding language used by the game engine Unity. Wang spent about four months coding the game, but there were still many bugs left in the code that she had to fix. She constantly needed to review and make iterations to her
