Dive into Kelp Forests!

Lauren Sloan
Freshperson
Collaborative Arts

Play the most updated version of the game here.

Ready to play?
This is a brief educational game that I wanted to use as an example of how we can make information about climate change interactive and accessible. A lot of the issues explored in this game are about ocean habitat health of the kelp forest and Santa Barbara channel. It is not as much about massive phenomena due to climate change, but smaller issues created by human intervention. It explores fishing regulations, ocean traffic, some pollutants and ocean trash, and habitat and keystone predator loss. There is much more that can be explored in this world within the Channel island ecosystem and within other habitats. Though it is created with a simple art form, I think we can see our own natural world as a place of fantasy. We have to understand what we have left to work with and incorporate that into our visual literacy. This education is especially important to the younger generation because unfortunately this will be our burden to bear. Not everyone is near the environments that are already rapidly changing to see it first hand. Creating an immersive world with characters that the player can care about, I would hope could incite some action. Now this game is more of an experiment, rather than a product that fully achieved this goal. However, I hope that my little experiment could inspire more games based in education of climate change with characters so cute or desperate that the player is flung into action. 

What is in this world?
The game starts with a map of the area. Within this map there are 4 hidden doors. The avatar, a little snail, can find these doors and follow the adventures.

There is one that explores the decline in kelp due to exploding sea urchin populations and loss of keystone predators such as sea otters. Most of the rooms are about going through a maze and talking to the kelp sprites. It also involves some searching for items and collecting sea urchins to help reset the ecosystem’s balance.

The next door takes you out to sea. You explore how a whale’s communication and migration is affected by increasing ocean traffic. The Santa Barbara Channel is clogged with shipping vessels, connecting Los Angeles to ports across the Pacific Ocean. Increased ocean noise can disrupt a whale’s communication with each other and increase stress. Ships also disrupt their migration patterns and can severely hurt or kill them if they collide. In this room you help a fellow whale friend avoid ships and reconnect with its family.

The next door takes you into the world of fish and commercial fishing. You can learn about how unregulated fishing can destroy the ocean floor with drag nets or lost gear. You also help free up by-catch that can become entangled in massive nets. The Channel Island Sanctuary is rich in sea life due to certain restrictions and habitat protection. However the Channel Island Condition Report predicted an increase in commercial fishing since 2016 because gas prices have not increased drastically and China’s GDP is still increasing. China being a major recipient of the channel’s commercial fishing, demand will keep increasing. These rooms focus on collecting the nets while the sprites explain these pressures.

The final door explores how shipwrecks can become important archeological sites as well as toxic polluters. Many wrecks can be a basis for a new habitat. Protection of both the site as a habitat and archeological site is crucial, and must not be disturbed by recreational activities. However some wrecks can leak harsh pollutants into the environment. In these rooms, it is mostly a series of mazes to find the one leaky engine.

What else could be explored?
These four rooms are only the surface level to all the ins and outs of ocean health. On a more complex game design platform, I would love to try to visualize more complex issues. El Ninos and expanding of the tropics is one area I wish I could have explored. I wish I also could have included concepts such as ocean acidification, or it’s capacity for absorbing CO2. These might be more complicated topics for the age range that this is designed for, but with more complicated topics could come a more complex world. It could attract ages of 12-14 rather than 10-11. The design that I have now is a simple example of how we can start designing interactive worlds to aid in education. Educational video games are not new, but the experiment I tried to undertake was creating the beginning of a narrative based world rather than simply puzzles or party games.

Response to the Game?
The game has only been tested on fellow students. The next step would be to find younger kids to try it out and see which age range best responds to something such as this. The response that I have gotten so far, from college age students, is that they had fun and actually learned something. This is very exciting for me because even if one person learns something new I feel like I have achieved something. Currently I have posted the game to my Instagram to receive some feedback from those who try, and I have asked peers to play the game and respond to a questionnaire. I am already planning an update for the whale adventure. There has been some requests to expand on it. Once I have made adjustments based on the feedback, I will post it to Itch.io, a platform for games created with Bitsy. It is mostly indie games, but it has a whole community and following for those that enjoy these simple pixel art games. From there, hopefully it will be easier to spread the word about it.