Space Apps Challenge 2018

Hello,

We are the CUBI Team. We have chosen to work on the Polar Quest Challenge in order to create a game for kids which can teach them the good habits to preserve the planet.

The situation about climate change is critical today. We are dealing with the biggest threat of our history and we need to change our behavior from now on in order to save our planet. We already know the consequences of the pollution on the environment because we watch the news, read book, and we have access to scientific DATA such as NASA’s.

But the next generation is not able for the moment to understand such complex tools because of their young age. But time is running. We can not wait for them to be adult to make them understand the urgency of the situation.

They have to be educated from an early age about the climate issue in order to give to them the right habits.

They need to know that each individual action can have global consequences and that they have to take eco-friendly habits in their daily life. To be involved, the kids need to see concrete examples that will left its mark on their minds.

The aim of the game we developped is to use real and complex DATA from NASA and vulgarize it so that even a kid can deal with such information and learn in a playful way.

The main character of the game is a young kid who has a teddy bear. He wants to go to the north pole to meet his friend for real but his mother explains to him that he has to wait until he is older. The problem is that the polar bears are in danger so the kid has to take the right decisions about his habits in order to save the polar bear and be able to visit them.

The interface of the game will contain different scientific indicators. First of all the footprint of his actions which are divided in different categories. Secondly the global parameters such as temperature, carbon dioxyde and so on. The kid will win if he can keep the increase of temperature below 1.5°C until 2040, the date of his trip.

The player will have to answer to multiple choice questions which represent the important choices that he will have to deal with when he will grow up.

He will begin with personnal and individual decisions. For example which type of fruits to choose at the supermarket. It will make him understand the importance of consuming local and seasonnal food. On the interface a cute polar bear will explain to him the correct answer and the consequences of a wrong answer on its habitat. After each decision of the player the indicator will change according to his answer. The polar bear will also give to the kid tricks to reduce the footprint of his actions.

Later in the game the player will become mayor and will take decision for his community. The purpose is to make the user deal with governmental issue in order to understand how a government can take decision to save the planet.

During the game the player will have an access to data from NASA website, vulgarized, which can make him understanding the effect of the pollution on the north pole. Indeed the DATA are displayed over a period of ten years so that the evolution is obvious.

Finally we are convinced that this type of games are fundamental to educate the next genaration on the climate issue. It should be a priority to give the right habits to children because they do not have the time to wait to discover the issue they are dealing with. The climate issue is also a time issue so we need to act from now on.