This week we had to invent a game to teach about composting and recycling. “It can be for adults, kids, or corporations. Your game should incorporate story and characters. Refer to concepts discussed in Chapter 4 of Game Design Workshop such as character, story, and dramatic arc.” Here is my response.
It is a Mountaineering and Hiking game. It is both a single and multiple player game. It can be played on a PC or a gaming console.
Target audience: Children and Environment conscious NGOs
Character: First person character. You model your own character in Poser, which either resembles you or has special characteristics. The trick here is to balance your Body Mass Index with the goal that you want to achieve. If you are too heavy, you can have high strength but will have less agility and vice versa. Depending on the mix and match of the characteristics available, you have to figure out the best body suitable for mountain climbing. Or you can choose to play as yourself, by putting in your own height, weight and characteristics.
Story and Game play: The play begins in the base camp of Mount Everest. There are two teams that begin hiking together. But the opposite team will take a lead and your team will follow them. As you are climbing the mountain, you will be faced by the boulders and other obstacles that the previous team drops on you. The goal is to save yourself from the obstacles so that you are safe and continue to hike and defeat the other team. The opponent team keeps dumping rubbish that you need to collect. If you collect recyclable materials, you gain points. But collecting rubbish will add to your weight and would slow you down. But when you dump the recyclable items in the correct dustbins which are placed all along your journey, you gain points. These points will give you strength and you can climb faster and defeat the opponent team. Every time you drop a recyclable material, little information about how you are saving the earth will be provided along with the recycling process. If you choose to ignore the rubbish, your uphill journey would become more difficult. The number of trees on which you could throw your rope around would become less as they will be dying due to the pollution and lack of nourishment. When you are climbing through snow, the snow would melt due to the pollution. Thus steep slopes without ice/snow would become very difficult for a climber. You will have to recycle enough waste before the snow begins to harden. Every time you collect and deposit composite material at the base of the trees, you get points and the trees become stronger. So you can jump from one tree to another and have a larger leap. The stronger the tree, the larger would be your leap. By the time you conquer Mount Everest, you not only know about recyclable products and processes but you are also exposed to the larger goals, i.e, hazards of environmental pollution, global warming and how it is affecting the ecology.
Dramatic Arc : In the story you begin as a simple climber, but soon become a super hero as you are leading a team who is set to change the world’s problem of pollution and lack of resources. In other words, you are saving the world. Because other people are expecting a lot out of you, you would want to maintain your image (fighting for a cause). You would soon realize the hazards of littering and subconsciously you become aware of your own actions in the daily world. You realize that just climbing the mountain is not the solution. Realizing that you can stop pollution only when you can climb ahead of the opponent team and stop them from littering. Realizing that stopping people from littering and at the same time recycling not just the materials used by you but others as well is the solution. After all you live in an ecosystem that gets effected, even if you are not the one who is polluting the atmosphere. So it is a collective responsibility to keep the atmosphere clean by recycling non degradable products.
