We developed this project during the “Häcks on the Beach 2020” hackathon organised by base.camp at University of Hamburg from 20th to 21st June 2020.
The theme was environmental protection and we chose to highlight the problems associated with marine life in river Eble. Being the second largest harbor in Europe, Hamburg receives more than 8000 ships each year. They bring with them a lot of pollutants. Along with that, Elbe has also been a victim of dredging with the depth being increased up to 12 meters in 2019. This has hugely impacted marine life making them susceptible to diseases like lymphocystis, fin rot, skin ulceration, and bleaching syndrome. The river water is full of sediments, chemicals and the natural flow of water and tides is also disturbed.
We, therefore, developed a WebGL based interactive game to increase awareness to this cause. Our protagonist is a carp fish named Jan. He lives in Elbe during the end of the 18th century. He is upset with the changes in his environment and needs answers for these sudden changes. Then he meets sage Ida, the eel who magically shows him the future and the miseries yet to come.
A player can go along the journey with Jan where Ida guides him through the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Solve the hurdles to move forward. Observe the changes in the environment. Listen to the wise words of sage Ida.
Play the game here
Want to run it on your local system and modify the code? Easy peesy. You can build the code in Unity with the following steps.
- Clone the repository.
- Open the StartScene in Unity using the Project settings given in the repo.
- In Unity Editor, goto File -- > Build Settings
- Wait for the build to be finished, host it on a server.
- Enjoy your time with Jan!
PS: The game is built using Unity 2019.1.0f2. It is primarily built on WebGL, but should also work on PC/Mac and mobile.
- Underwater theme is taken from: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/environments/underwater-diving-94029
- Music used in the game is taken from : https://freesound.org/
- Connect the game directly with real-time ship data at the harbour.
- Make the environment more realistic using published historical data, particularly about dredging.
We also created a short advertisement video for the game that can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8BnunX1sXk