COVID-19 Response: City Building AR Card Game, Climate Detectives: Open for Business
Overview
The game, which has received funding from the Reese Innovation Lab, is currently under development. You can see the pitch video we shared with potential K-12 playtesters, which includes our original prototype, on the right.
The purpose of Climate Detectives is to help children develop a sense of self-efficacy and resiliency in the face of climate change. Because global warming and other environmental disturbances are predicted to facilitate the development of more novel viruses, it is imperative we teach the younger generations how to recover from them.
Approach
Using my research from Climate Detectives: North Carolina and the Southeast Coast, a team of two other graduate students (Jake Harrison and Diane Boswell) and I engineered an AR card game prototype, called “Climate Detectives: Open for Business."
As an overview, “Climate Detectives: Open for Business” is a project-based collaborative learning experience, one which leverages augmented reality technologies to teach about the effects of pandemics and real-world sustainable rebuilding. In this game, two or more players act as consultants for small towns that are trying to rebuild after a year-long pandemic decimated the local economy. Players must make tough choices together on how to re-open businesses and essential services in a way that leads to a sustainable, environmentally-friendly economy. AR-enhanced cards give players the information needed to strategize rebuilding. Designed for ages 7 through 15.
Process
Fellow teammate Jake Harrison and I worked on game design together. We drew inspiration from tabletop city-building card games, like Machi Koro and Big City, for developing the game rules. However, we found those games to be fast-paced and competitive. While that certainly makes them entertaining, we wanted our game to encourage slow thinking, strategic choice-making, and, above all else, collaboration.
In this game, each player manages an individual town, based in a specific environment (agricultural, arid, coastal, forested, and mountainous). Each player must reopen their town with enough supports in place to protect it from future pandemics. But the game only ends when all towns are “open for business.” Players have the option of working together and sharing resources to achieve this goal more quickly (e.g. using game-coins to build a light-rail, which allows hospitals and some businesses to be shared).
Card Illustrations
Our cards are designed by me, then illustrated by Colorado artist Samantha Fowler. Some samples are below.
Results
Currently, we are working with illustrator Samantha Fowler to design our playing cards. We are also using ZapWorks Studio to produce the AR component. Our expected publication date is in Summer 2023.
Children at a Brooklyn middle school playing our game. Sorry for the low-quality photo – for obvious reasons, we don’t post identifying photographs of our playtesters without express written permission!
Playtesting Sessions and Results
As of December 2021, we have playtested with over thirty groups of K-12 students. This has resulted in seventeen iterations of Climate Detectives.
Recently, we have begun piloting our game in schools in Austin and Brooklyn. At our last playtesting session, which was conducted at Workshop Middle School with STEM teacher Vivian Yu, 100% of the 16 middle schoolers who played our game reported highly enjoying and feeling highly engaged with Climate Detectives: Open for Business. In addition, many of the students concluded the session by asking where they could buy the game, as well as when we would return for another playtesting session.
Creation of “Mighty Curious Games”
Background
The Mighty Curious Games team: Jake Harrison (Co-founder and Chief Game Designer), Paige Harriman (Co-founder and Creative Director), and Diane Boswell (PM and COO)
After production of this game, team members Jake Harrison, Diane Boswell, and I plan to continue to build games that teach children about climate change and environmental sustainability. We founded Mighty Curious Games in June 2020, which will produce more editions of the Climate Detectives series.
Role
In my role as Creative Director, I lead creative direction of the game and company, conduct design research and playtesting sessions, collaborate with our illustrator to design playing cards, develop the AR component of the cards on Zappar Studio, and help manage the project scope. In addition, I also work with Jake, our game designer, to improve the playing experience.