Kshitij Gajapure

Hi!, I'm Kshitij, a self-taught game developer and designer with 3+ years of experience with 30+ prototypes, games, and simulations. I’m a Senior Undergrad at IIT Gandhinagar, pursuing a major in Comp. Sci, with minors in Design, Cognitive Sci. as well as Humanities. I believe that Cognitive Science can be used to make games more engaging and Humanities can be used to make games for the betterment of the individual as well as that of society.

-> In the "Fun Side Projects" tab, one can find the projects which I've worked on in my free time.

-> In the "Resume" tab one can find my resume and more information about my skills and interests.

-> Below are my research interests and some of the projects that I've worked on or was a part of.

Research Interests

-> Rehab games for Stroke Patients

-> Games for Education and improving Social Skills

-> Brain training using Video games

NutriMonster (MIT Reality Hack)

Won the "Best use of Vuforia" track at the MIT Reality Hack

Devpost: Link Video: Link Github: Link

Physical products can only display a limited amount of information, and companies chose to display what sells - not what you need to know.

NutriMonsters overlays physical products with an AR-filter to only display the information you really need to know, stripping away any manipulative influence of brands or claims.

Information density changes as a shopper gets closer to the packaging (nutritional score --> key nutritional warnings --> detailed information).

Implemented the core Unity features for detecting the product, retrieving the data associated with the product, and distance based mechanism for displaying the information in AR.

IEarU (UNESCO MGIEP)

A game based app for young children to assess their readiness to read.

IEarU, offers a performance-based screening for reading difficulties in 4-7 year olds. It is designed to test a child’s auditory discrimination skills and letter-sound correspondence, through a multi-sensory gamified experience.

Apart from designing and developing the game, implemented an in house email and OTP based registration, login, and user management system.

One of the key features of the game was storing the responses of the users on the server for analysis.

Helped in user research and testing for “FramerSpace”.

Edu_Tech Model

A paper on the same has been submitted for review in the “International Conference on ‘Designing for children' with a focus on 'Play and Learn'”.

A game based model to explain abstract concepts in a more effective way to boost the academic performance, self-efficacy, and self-esteem of students in the age group of 10-13 years.

This model will help educators to develop educational games to engage kids and provide them with the required motivation, thereby increasing their attention span and remembering ability.

Based on the model, Design and developed a Board Game as well as an app to teach History in an interesting way.

VR Games for Rehab

Designing VR games for Stroke patient rehab.

A library of VR Games to motivate and train stroke patients in their Rehab, using a fiber-optics based glove for inputs.

The games were designed with a goal of empowering the stroke patients.

Designed a relaxing UI for the dashboard of the Rehab game.

Cognitive Sci. Research

Analyzing the effectiveness of Multiplayer Brain Training games on young adults.

In recent years, a lot of research has been done in testing the effectiveness and validity of the brain training games but little has been done in testing the effectiveness of competitive brain training games.

It has been proved that competition leads to an increase in performance, hence we propose that competitive brain training will lead to an increase in the efficiency of brain training games.

The aim of this study will be to validate these claims by comparing the effects of competitive brain training against single-player brain training games.

Private Project

Worked as an Intern on an unannounced Mobile game for Whatbox Ent. Pvt. Ltd.

While working as an UI Programmer, implemented the proposed design while updating it to decrease the overall build size, improving performance and making it more engaging.

As a Game Programmer, instead of using an Asset from the asset store, implemented it from scratch which resulted in significant increase in performance as well as decrease in the build size.

PlayPro

A Top down shooter game published by me on Play Store. It has 200+ downloads in 12 Countries.
Github: Link

The objective of the game is to survive the enemy waves as long as possible. The output damage as well as the agility of the enemy increases with each wave.

Of all the things that I learnt by making this game, integrating Google play services like login ids, leaderboards, anchievements as well as saving data to the cloud were the most interesting ones.

With the help of Playtesting, found and resolved a glitch which enabled the players to hack the game and top the leaderboard.

With the help of Object pooling and performance profiling, optimized the game for lower-end smartphones.

IP-Ninja

A Gamified 2D platformer to spread awareness about "Intellectual Property".
GitHub: Link

"IP Ninja" is an educational game to spread awareness about "Intellectual Property".

The main problem that I faced while designing the game was how to make it engaging as well as informative. To tackle this problem, I've used Gamification as well as Curoisity driven gameplay.

To keep the code clean and easy to manage, I've created a Character class and the referenced the Player as well as Enemy to the Character class (instead of Monobehaviour). This helped me in saving the development time and using it for playtesting to improve the game.

Hyperpoetry Level 1

Launched at the Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) conference 2018.
GitHub: Link

It's an infinite attention based cognitive game.

This project is an initial attempt to bridge the philosophical thought of ‘Continuum Theory & Hausdorff Space’ along with the concept of Hypertext through the use of poems that have the subject matter of ‘infinity’ as its core.

In this game, the player has to continue to generate the poems by observation and putting together the pieces of his/her own next choice to complete a logical poem-ic syntax.

Using Gamification to Solve Traffic Problems

Presented in the the Workshop on "Design and Cognitive Intervention for Large-Scale Social Concerns" which was jointly organized by IIT Gandhinagar and JAIST (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology).

This solution is inspired from the "Speed Camera Lottery" system in Sweden.

It also proposes a new system for the Traffic lights to prevent drivers from crossing the Stop line. This new system is low-tech and can be implemented with very less effort and changes to the current traffic light system.