RE:GREEN 2050

Start Screen: Displays main menu and a dashboard of your actions, quests and accomplishments.
Career Options: The game allows you to make career-based climate decisions.
Before Image: This shows what the city looks like before the user does anything.
After Image: This shows what the city looks like after the user does something to help the climate.
Visual Design Inspiration: This is a collage of our apocalypse and cute aesthetic vision including the 2.5D aspects.
Overall webapp look on mobile phone screen.

Inspiration

People should know and be aware of climate change, however, because they can't see the effects, they ignore it. We wanted to create an interactive experience for people to see what the world will look like in 2050 and to show them that every action has consequences. We also wanted to help them see the direct effect of the little climate-based decisions they make in their daily lives. And in order to create this awareness, there's no better way to pique people's interest than by making it into a game.

What it does

RE:GREEN 2050 is an AI-assisted climate survival and environmental restoration game set in a fictional city in the year 2050. The main idea is to help people understand the importance of climate action by allowing them to experience a possible future affected by environmental damage, pollution, and climate-related disasters.

Most people already know that climate change is an important global issue. However, understanding environmental problems does not always encourage people to take action. Many environmental consequences can feel distant from everyday life, especially when people cannot directly experience them. Our project aims to change this by transforming environmental education into an interactive experience.

Instead of simply reading about climate change or answering educational questions, players enter a virtual world where environmental problems affect their surroundings, health, resources, and daily survival.

The game combines several elements:

Exploration and survival
Environmental investigation
Interactive climate-related missions
Career-based decision-making
AI-assisted environmental education
Resource and health management
Community awareness and collaboration
City restoration and visual progression

Every decision has consequences. Some actions provide immediate improvements, while others address the underlying causes of environmental problems and offer long-term benefits. The game also demonstrates that climate action is not limited to scientists, engineers, or governments. People from different professions can contribute in different ways.

How we built it

We brainstormed the idea, researched climate chane policies and actions that can be taken and created a paper prototype of the game we envisioned. We then used ChatGPT to generate an HTML5, CSS and JS based standalone implementation. And finally we hosted the webapp on netlify.

Challenges we ran into

We initially only had two playable characters, but we wanted to have more. However, that complicated the game further.
Characters are currently limited to 2D movement and simple keyboard functions even though we wanted to make something more sophisticated and immersive.
Design-wise, we wanted to make it simulate the real life consequences of climate change, however, we also wanted to incorporate a cute aesthetic which was challenging to combine.

What's next for RE:GREEN 2050

The goal of the game is to create awareness about the current climate crisis and what we can do about it, so we plan on making the game public and advertise it to more people. We also plan on connecting the activities in the game to real-life activities by collaborating with local institutions and organizations. You will be able to "press E" in real life!