At the end of my first year in Game Design, my school organized a large citizen-focused hackathon with all the students from my cohort.
The goal was simple: create a playful experience in three days to meet the needs of a charity organization.
I formed a team with other students: two game artists, one music & sound designer, and another game designer. This team structure allowed us to divide tasks according to each person’s strengths and interests.
I mainly focused on the implementation in Unity, while the other game designer worked on the narrative and dialogue. The two game artists created the visuals, and the music & sound designer produced the sound effects and music.
We chose the French Red Cross as our partner organization. Their request was the following: recreate their awareness-raising exhibition on climate change and climate refugees in a playful, digital format.
We decided to take inspiration from a 2017 game, Bury Me, My Love. In this game, the player follows a Syrian couple fleeing the civil war, with gameplay centered around message-based conversations between the characters.
In our game, the player interacts with a friend (also through a messaging interface) who must flee her home due to disasters caused by climate disruption. The player’s choices influence her journey, and random events (news, notifications) also affect how the player approaches the different options given to them.”
The game takes place in France in 2049, like the Red Cross exhibition, and aims to raise awareness of climate issues by showing that they affect us today (and will affect us even more in the near future).
Throughout the project, I was able to develop my organizational skills, game design abilities, programming hard skills, as well as interpersonal communication, presentation, teamwork, and other social soft skills.
The groups were ranked by the partner organizations : each association selected a winning team to continue the project with them.
Several groups were nominated by the Red Cross, but ultimately ours was chosen as the final winner.
This project was extremely enriching and valuable to me, especially because its short duration forced us to organize ourselves efficiently and divide the work effectively. It was also particularly motivating because every student on the team was genuinely invested in the project, working in true synergy : each profile complementing the others.
LinkedIn post by Impact Campus, the organizer of the civic hackathon
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