The Game

  • Genre: Informative quiz
  • Target User: College Student

Game Summary

Ocean Heroes is an educational yet enjoyable game for our target market: the college student. We feel the topic is suited to this target market as students are the biggest offenders in terms of plastic waste and the problem needs to be resolved. The game is an interactive story in which the player is given the opportunity to create their own Avatar and plunge into a compelling deep-sea adventure through our Oceans. The aim of the game is to remove the plastic, which is infecting and destroying the sea creature’s habitat from the ocean. Each level is a different ocean and levels progress in terms of difficulty. To progress the player will be shown dialogue amongst characters (sea creatures) at the beginning of the level. The use of sea creatures is important for our game as we feel it will cause the player to feel empathy when they realise the little pieces of plastic they are throwing away can harm creatures. They will then be presented with a question relating to the problem which is most relevant to the ocean they are in. If they get their question right they will be rewarded with an animation of a piece of plastic leaving the ocean and entering their bag. They will also be presented with a certificate of completion for that level.  

An important thought behind our game was its link to the “real world”, we wanted to implement change immediately and not just be an educational resource. To do this we proposed a partnership with a project like “Ocean Clean-up” (donations on our part from advertising funds and give the player the ability to donate) or the use of The Riptide Movement’s song “Plastic Oceans” as our soundtrack.  Finally, we realised that the successes of the game would soar if we added the element of sharing and competing with friends, players can take on real life challenges such as: No single-use plastic for a week. They can record their progress and share theirsuccesses with friends.

 Game features

Welcome into the world of our Oceans and its animals. Can you imagine the idyllic view, when you are standing on deck of a ship and in front of you is nothing but the endless and rushing sea? Can you imagine the salty smell, colourful fishes, the dolphins and turtles around you in the Pacific Ocean? And finally, to draw a more realistic picture, can you also imagine the giant great pacific garbage patch, that stretches hundreds of miles across the Pacific Ocean, riddled with tiny shreds of plastic of former bags, bottles, packaging? The amount of plastic garbage in our Oceans is increasing steadily and it is endangering the lives of its habitants –animals such as seals, turtles, fish, whales, dolphins. It is time for action and you can be the one who makes it happen! As soon as you complete all educational levels of our new game Ocean Heroes  a donation of 5€ will be made to our partner organisation Ocean Cleanup, that is developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans out of plastic. But don’t worry, also the game itself is a big adventure, that will always remind you of our even bigger mission: To save the ocean and its habitants from plastic!

Save our Oceans from plastic!

From the very start of the game on you are warmly encouraged to participate: Create your own Ocean-hero avatar, maybe it even looks like yourself? A map with in total ten different levels will lead you through our global Oceans. You might be shocked in the beginning by the huge amount of plastic garbage but very few amount of animals, that you can discover around you. Here begins your turn – take the challenge and demonstrate your knowledge about plastic and its impact on the ocean, animals as well as human beings in our numerous quizzes. As soon as you answer a question correctly, a piece of plastic garbage will disappear from the ocean and will be booked into your hero account, where you can fill bags with as much plastic as you are able to. Remember– every collected piece of plastic is a little success and a trophy for you! The more plastic you collect the more endangered animals, who are different species in each ocean, will return and are saved by you! From level to level you  will be accompanied by a catching soundtrack, but will also meet higher demands of difficulty. The final level on our map is facing our strongest opponent: Are you ready to fight the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Keep in mind – We are stronger together. So why don’t also link together with friends and compete with them in weekly challenges, where you can set your own targets on how you want to reduce your plastic waste in your daily life. If a friend accepts the challenge, let’s have a look, are you able to fulfill your aim?

Its time for action and the person who can make it reality is You! Join the mission, let’s fight together for a clean Ocean without plastic nor endangered animals. Become an Ocean Hero Now!

Look & Feel

    The look and feel of our game, OceanHeroes, are paramount to both its success and effectiveness. In having college students as our target audience, it is critical that our game looks both professional and enjoyable. We hope to grab the players attention through the use of colours, animations, backgrounds etc.

    The main page of the game will feature a colour-coded map of the world. The map will be split up into five coloured zones, the Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, Southern and finally Pacific Oceans. Each zone will feature one aquatic animal, this will be the animal that is found in the largest numbers in this zone. The point of this is to ‘tug at the heartstrings’ of the individual playing the game as they will be made aware of the specific animal that the plastic waste is causing harm to.

   In each zone there will be levels, each with an MCQ quiz. The backdrop of these quiz pages will be a blue ocean theme with animations of fish and other aquatic life swimming by as the player is doing the quiz. Upon completion of the quiz, the player will be awarded a piece of plastic waste that will be put in their waste bag as a form of indicating their progress as they make their way around the map. Once the bag is full, the game is complete. At the end of each level, the player will be met with a fact, read aloud by one of the games avatars. These will be real facts about the ocean in which they are playing at the time and how it, and its sea creatures have been harmed by plastic waste.

     To provide the player with yet another sense of achievement, as they move through the ocean and collect the waste, the animals will begin to reappear across the map. This provides the player with added motivation to continue from level to level and complete the game.  Upon completion of each stage, the player will be shown a screen containing a certificate of completion for that stage and a ‘next stage’ button which will allow them to proceed to the next part of the map.

Example of level completion page

Digital Artefact

The Digital Artefact that we have decided to include in our game pitch is an example of the animation clip that appears as the player begins each level. We used the game tool Scratch to create our digital artefact. As our Gamification topic is Plastic and our oceans, and as the aim of our game is to educate university students on the effects of plastic pollution in the ocean, our animation clip is set under the sea. We used Scratch to make a clip displaying sea creatures in the ocean. We then enabled the sea creatures to share dialogue which educates the player by demonstrating the impact of plastic in their home. Our reasoning for using animated sea creatures to communicate these issues to the player is to make them feel empathetic towards the sea creatures and for them to understand the physical effect plastic has in our oceans. As the player progresses through the game and the difficulty of each level increases, the facts communicated by the sea creatures in the clip will become more advanced.The dialogue shared between the sea creatures will also include tips for the player on how they can reduce the amount of plastic polluted in their daily lives. 

Scratch Link //scratch.mit.edu/projects/embed/268776689/?autostart=false</a

Bibliography