Save the Sea

We were inspired by SDG 14: Life Below Water, which emphasizes protecting oceans as they face rapid warming due to human activities like pollution, overfishing, and greenhouse gas emissions. Seeing how marine heatwaves are destroying ecosystems critical to Earth's health motivated us to create an engaging, interactive way to educate people about this urgent issue.

Through this project, we learned about the complex connections between human behavior, ocean warming, and marine ecosystem collapse. We also gained hands-on experience in building educational gameplay mechanics that balance simplicity with real-world science.

We built our project, The Heatwave Protocol, using Unity3D. We designed a simple simulation where players must manage rising ocean temperatures by solving environmental "missions," each based on real-world issues.

• Temperature gradually rises over time, starting from +0.0°F.
• Missions appear across the world map, and players must complete environmental quizzes to slow down or reverse the warming trend.
• If the temperature reaches +4.5°F, the game ends.

The art assets, mission systems, and gameplay flow were all custom-built to create an accessible and educational experience.

One major challenge was translating complex scientific concepts into fun, easy-to-understand game mechanics without oversimplifying the issues.
Another challenge was balancing the game difficulty — making the timer, mission frequency, and temperature increase realistic but still playable.
Finally, designing a system that would educate players without feeling like a textbook required careful iteration and user testing.