Time To Go Green In Gaia Town
Gaia Town – Previewed
By Julie Morley
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Players start out with a customizable avatar.
People argue back and forth about the state of our beloved planet; but we can all admit that we’re not the nicest to it. Many take precautions to prevent harmful gases and compounds from seeping into the soil, damaging the water supply or making their way into our atmosphere, harshening the air we breathe. But when you compare the numbers, it’s still relatively low.
In schools, there’s little environmental information for the children; the only real exposure they have is through watching certain television programs. Unfortunately, very few watch television now and resort to the Internet. Even though the Internet may contain plenty of resources and helpful information regarding these issues, it’s difficult for children to find it and many parents aren’t able to chip in the time to gear them along.
Afterwards, the players can switch between 3rd person and isometric view. They have free reign in the world but have some duties: taking care of the city.
Many emphasize that knowledge of history prevents others from repeating it. But if we aren’t teaching the kids about our planet’s condition, how can we expect them to act any different than we have? How would they know any better if they aren’t taught?
One of the best educational methods that will keep children interested is video games. All the factors are there: fun, interactivity, repetition. Video games are the perfect gateway to teach children about helpful actions to protect and salvage our planet.
Which is the point of Gaia Town.
Which involves several miscellaneous mini-games involving renewable resources and maintaining environmentally friendly habits.
Gaia Town is a simulation game centering around taking care of your personal town to directly affect the planet that’s slowly deteriorating. A special team from the future, named the Eco-Team, has traveled to the past to emphasize an important message: clean up this mess, now!
In Gaia Town players have an entire city to explore and help along. Players can enjoy the game in third person or from an isometric city perspective; that way children can play to their preference.
And even picking up trash and promoting recycling.
Gaia Town is much like a role playing game; players can create an avatar to their liking and begin the day in their very own house. From that point on, players will have particular responsibilities for the day to attend to in order to acquire a specific amount of points such as cleaning rivers, picking up trash, recycling, and dishwashing. Experience is gained, the town expands, and more importantly, the CO2 levels are maintained. Combined with miniature activities and puzzles, children will be learning about different ways to go green while enjoying an interactive experience.
All of this can be done on PC, Mac, or mobile devices with iOS and Android.
The mini-games are vital for gameplay in Gaia Town; each is a puzzle or educational lesson of some sort, providing information for future activities and providing understanding for environmentally friendly activities. At the end of their lesson, children will be quizzed on what they learned. It’s all about raising awareness while stirring up some fun learning. At the moment, there are about 20 mini-games designed for Gaia Town but there is a guarantee of more to come.
The developers at MAS DIGITAL are planning to release Gaia Town for both iOS and Android devices along with a version for PC and Mac. The Kickstarter campaign for Gaia Town runs until June 27th, and frankly, it needs your help.
[divider][facebook][tweet][Google][pinterest][follow id=”Cliqist” size=”large” count=”true” ] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/julie.jpg” ]Julie Morley is a freelance writer and comic artist from Spring, Texas. She attended the Academy of Art University for two years, studying Animation and Illustration. Whilst here, she learned about writing comic scripts, storyboards, and general storytelling. Since leaving college, she has been working on personal comic projects, stories, and illustrations. She aspires to release a self published comic within two years. For the majority of her life, she has been playing console games, typically being third-person shooters and sandboxes. Her favorite game of existence is Dark Cloud II (Dark Chronicle) and her favorite Indie game is Gone Home.[/author]
