Zombie Pollution

  • role: production lead / PI
    • advocate concept, get funding.
    • design, build, test playable prototype
    • recruit, manage production team
  • project size: 2 staff, 1 month, ~$10k

zp_35

Project Summary

Zombie Pollution (prerelease playable link) zombie pollution screenshot was built during a series of co-creation workshops with 30 children in years 5, 6, and 7 at Hilton Primary School in Hilton, Western Australia. Developers, researchers, teacher and children met as a design team for eight two-hour workshops held over sixteen weeks to design and build two serious game projects.

For this project, the teacher was the customer. She set two goals: be entertaining enough to engage school-aged children (platformer/shooting zombies) and promote sustainability.  The developers worked as research assistants during the workshops, giving them significant time working directly with the children. The students and teacher conceived and co-designed a casual game named “Zombie Pollution.”  After design sessions, we found a more specific sustainability aim: raise awareness of the importance of a community approach to achieving sustainability (cleaning the planet), which the teacher approved.  Successive playtests developed the visual clarity, improved progression, and tuned the difficulty.  The game’s source code was given to children. We used Scirra’s Construct as well as Photoshop with Wacom tablets in this work.