The client —
The Water Hero is one of the 4 interactive installations/games we designed for the Ghajn – Water Conservation Awareness Centre in Malta. The project was commissioned by the Global Water Partnership - Mediterranean in cooperation with the Energy and Water Agency in Malta, in charge of the Centre. The Centre is open to schools and the public. The games are used to raise awareness on the water scarcity challenges encountered in the Maltese islands and the Mediterranean. The concept of the Game was developed by GWP-Med.
The game is a fun and educational experience for children aged between 8 and 12. It is displayed on a large screen installation (135x241cm) that consists of 4 smaller screens, paired together as a unit. It is ideal for two players.
The design objective —
Water is a finite resource and extremely scarce across the Mediterranean. The gap between water availability and demand, in a context of increasing pressures and climate change impacts, dictates the exploitation of Non-Conventional Water Resources to cover secondary, non-potable uses. The need of the client was to raise awareness among children towards water saving practices and the application of non-conventional water resources in two contexts. First: in a home environment. Second: in a whole city.
The creative concept —
The idea was to present the water saving practices in a context that would be exciting and engaging for the kids and would still be accurate. We created an imaginary world for the game setting that resembles a universe. We used a futuristic and retro aesthetic, inspired by old arcade games which seem to have a revival in pop culture the last couple of years. The game is a storytelling adventure that consists of 2 main parts: First: the ‘Lonely planet’. Second: the ‘Pink planet’. Each planet has 3 game stages.
The story begins in the Lonely planet where the Water Hero lives and it presents the water saving practices in a household environment. Every stage begins with a short intro video that explains the task and device before the player is called to save water through miscellaneous CTA notifications and action-game challenges. The illustrations depict with a creative twist, devices found in a typical house. This way the player can relate to the real-life devices, learn valuable lessons and simple ways of saving water in daily life.
After the completion of the Lonely planet stages, the Water Hero is called to help the Pink planet where according to the story the ‘Bad weather’ is threatening the city. This part presents the water saving practices in a complicated city environment. Following the same gameplay after the explanatory video, the player is called to solve problems and help the city maintain its water-saving facilities. These stages introduce non-conventional water facilities used in a city like water plaza and rainwater harvesting methods. After the successful completion of each stage, a video showcases the result of the achievement and explains further each facility.
The main characteristic of the game is the humorous presentation both in the plot and the characters as well as the escalating tension which helps towards the high engagement of the kids-players.
The design style and images are the results of a combination between analog and digital collages. We used a 2d animation style based on a gif-style technique. All sound effects and music were created in-house with samples from open source sound libraries (Freesound.org). Our client GWP Med was responsible for editing the texts.
