Serious Game Concept

Climate change with the aim of raising awareness

Choice of Game Genre

2D jumping platformer adventure game with different objectives embedded within three different stages

Target Audience and Player Type

The target audience for our game are children aged 12 to 14 who are aware of climate change but are unaware of its consequences. They also do not know what actions they can take to combat climate change.

Overall Goal and Storyline

The game begins with our protagonist who is launched back in time to save the world before it falls prey to the effects of climate change. His efforts in the past will affect the future. The overall goal of the game is to raise awareness about the actions you can take to combat climate change by completing the game objective of each stage.

The game also portrays the harmful effects that climate change has brought to the environment with monsters scattered through stages depicting the challenges that our environments face today.

Central Character

Our central character is a gender-neutral kid at a similar age to our target demographic. The basic functionality of our character is exploring the game world, interacting with NPCs, and completing objectives within the levels. The character will also interact differently to different elements within each level.

Game World

The game world is set on a planet which mirrors earth along with a few elements of fantasy strewn in. Each level location is chosen for their relevance to climate change today. Each of these themes revolves around a modern environment, portraying the deterioration and decay of the local environment. For example, levels based around cities will include imagery of buildings and entities that are relative to the theme. There are also levels based on, forests and oceans - each including relevant fauna and flora specific to that location.

There are NPCs at the start of every level which players interact with to learn about the objective of the level and how the environment the NPC is in is suffering. Players can also talk to the NPC again to find out about their progress towards the current objective.

Each stage also has random monsters which spawn while the player tries to complete the objective. The monsters can either fire projectiles at the player or chase them throughout the level, both damaging the player to show the harmful effects of the environment.

Scoring and Lives Mechanism

Scores are based off several aspects within each level like time taken to complete the level, the number of monsters defeated and the difficulty chosen. Once the player finishes the game they can enter in their score which can be viewed on the high score screen in the main menu.

Players also have 5 health which is depleted when attacked by a monster. Once fully depleted they fail the level and have to restart it.

Level Generation

Each level has a fixed design based on each theme. Different themes result in a different map layout for the level. The difficulty chosen also affects certain aspects regarding the level, like spawn rates of monsters, time given for level and amount of objectives to complete.

Levels also have to be sequentially unlocked with the completion of one level unlocking another one.