Researching Games

While researching games related to green roofing and the water cycle, I found a handful of examples that were tangentially related. There were quite a few examples of board games available when doing a quick internet search. There were far fewer video games related to the water cycle and even fewer video games that were functional that related to the water cycle.

Games of Note

The Water Cycle Game

This game is provided by South East Water, a government owned retail water corporations that provides drinking water, sewerage, trade waste, recycled water and water-saving services in Australia. This game was located using the search terms “Water Cycle Video Game” and plays in the browser. The game is quite the unique take on the water cycle. The player takes on the role of an anthropomorphic water droplet that helps the cycle through its natural process by reflecting rays of sunlight into the water using a mirror. This heats up the water temperature, and after enough heat is provided, evaporation begins. Eventually, the accumulation turns into rain and the level is cleared (demonstrating part of the water cycle). This mechanic is iterated on throughout the game. For example, the second level includes bouncing sun rays into an ice cap on a mountain to create water runoff. There are other small elements included that increase the learner’s understanding of the cycle. For example, the sun moves in the sky and the angle of the rays coming at your character change.

The core dynamic of bouncing the rays into various states of water could be considered a type of collecting. Enough rays must be “collected” (bounced into a mountain or body of water) to pass the level. There is a timer present but, as it doesn’t cut the player off after a certain amount of time, it doesn’t perfectly fit into a race to the finish dynamic. Instead, it acts as a strange time trial. According to the site, the game is designed for Australian school age children in years (grades) 3-6 for learning curricula in the province of Victoria. In my play-through, the solutions and game play pieces were very straightforward, but the implementation was very difficult to control. If the controls were more finely tuned, the game would have succeeded perfectly in hitting its target age range.

Running Water

Running Water is a very clever game played in the browser on itch.io. It is an infinite runner in the viewpoint of a platformer. The player is again a droplet of water like in The Water Cycle Game, but instead of viewing the cycle as an active participant, the player’s droplet actual changes states from gas to liquid to solid as different zones are encountered. The game was found by searching “water cycle” on itch.io and is one of the better water cycle games on the platform. Like most infinite runner style games, it could be argued that the core dynamic fits into either the race to the finish category or the rescue/escape category. Unlike a more traditional race to the finish like Mario Kart, the goal is to survive the longest (get the highest score) instead of finish the map first. Also, unlike a traditional escape game like forbidden island, there is no cutoff point in which the player is in a fail state for not accomplishing the objective in time. Instead, the player can play as long as possible and even gain back health taken from enemies by running into additional water droplets.

According to the game’s bio page, it was created for the “weekly game jam n°143” that had a theme of focusing on running water. The description of the game implies that the game was created to teach the states of water. Given the subject matter, it could be reasonably assumed that the game was intended for school age children as most institutions teach about states of matter and the water cycle in early school years.

Weather Lord

The game Weather Lord was found on Steam by searching using the term “weather” and scrolling through a list of various types of simulators. The game is a desktop app downloaded from the Steam store. The game focuses on how weather affects communities and is needed for farming and other occupations. The player controls the weather by combining items like clouds and sunshine to achieve different weather patterns. By combining enough clouds, the player can create a rain cloud that waters crops for a farm. The player achieves points by making the community thrive through actions like growing crops. Different combinations can achieve different effects of weather to solve in-game puzzles. Energy systems can be powered by different weather systems and act as a puzzle for the player. After the player achieves enough points, the player passes the level. The player is guided through the game by an omniscient narrator that also acts as the tutorial-giver.

The core dynamic of combining and placing weather patterns on certain areas to unlock items and score points falls squarely in the solution category. The game also includes an element of escape/rescue with the time limit placed on each level. The game appears to be intended for entertainment purposes as it is behind a paywall and has several sequels. The game’s difficulty indicates that it would be appropriate for a wide variety of ages.

Bringing it All Together

There were a variety of approaches to incorporating weather and the water cycle into video games. I found no examples of games that incorporated green roofing, but there were plenty of examples of weather related games. Games that included the water cycle and weather all included elements of accumulation and precipitation. Some of the games included evaporation as a component or a mechanic. The different states of water were present in all games in at least two of the forms. The impact the water cycle has on the environment and human life was displayed in drastically different ways across the games. In The Water Cycle Game the effect included phenomena such as water runoff whereas in Weather Lord, the rainfall caused crops to grow. The mechanics also varied quite a bit with some games being heavily abstracted like Running Water compared to full simulations of the water cycle on itch.io. The main commonality and the component that I believe makes all the games compelling is how the simple flow of water through its natural cycle can have a drastic impact on the environment it interacts with.