We created a serious game concept for Terragon https://terragon.nl/. Terragon is an organisation that provides playful learning sessions for kids and does projects on regenerative thinking, in lots of forms. Terragon asked us to create a game that brings young people together in a playful way, and educate them about regenerative thinking in the process. During this project I was responsible for the visual style of the game, designing the rules of the game, and communicating our design decisions to the programming team.
About the project
The goal of the game is to create an ecosystem on your farm that is regenerative. This means it doesn’t produce waste, the biodiversity is high and the soil is regenerated by planting different crops in succession.
In the game you have your own farm, in a real-world location. The game makes use OpenStreetMap data. You are able to interact with people around you, by trading items, looking at their farms and exchanging ideas on regenerative designs of said farms.
If a person is performing good in your area, this will positively influence your farm as well, as there will be less waste and more biodiversity to attract in the local area. The idea of this is to help people understand that regenerative thinking has a compound effect if more people behave in this way.
The lessons I took away from this project
This was my first time working together with a programming team, and communicating our ideas to people from a different background in such a way that they are properly implemented. This took some getting used to. Programmers communicate in a different way than designers. It was a great experience that helped me a lot in future projects.
