Carleton game inspires you to reduce pollution

Students from Carleton university took first place in the Windows Phone game category at the 2012 Canadian Imagine Cup with their game Breathe.

Canadians leave a large environmental footprint, how can we inspire Canadians to take more care of the environment?

The Solution:

Develop a game that imagines a future where earth has continued to ignore the issue of pollution and eventually has made life on the surface inhabitable then present the player with environmental puzzles to solve as a reminder that one person can make a difference

The Game:

 

The game is called Breathe. It was developed by Carleton University students  Gar Lam, Curtis Field, Clark McGillis, and Eva Demers-Brett mentored by Jean-Sylvain Sormany. The game has a gritty feel, after all pollution is a serious problem, the game shouldn’t feel like a Saturday morning cartoon. Instead this feels more reminiscent of Frank Miller of Sin City fame which is much better suited to the atmosphere portrayed in the game.

The mechanics in the game require a variety of interactions, push the rock, shake the tree, collect the objects to solve the puzzles. The player’s actions affect the environment, but the environment also affects the player. For example, the sludge will keep the player from moving to quickly. Each puzzle must be solved before the player’s oxygen runs out.

When you solve a puzzle you see the world shift from an orange haze into a blue sky as they transform the polluted world into a clean world. The end result is a unique game with a theme that reminds us all that the actions we take today will affect the world we live in tomorrow.