Posted on March 30, 2009 - by Eric

Introducing the EcoSaviors

A most excellent logo

We are proud to intro our newest game, EcoSaviors! The game is about the importance of telecommunications and eco-friendliness, but don’t close this tab just yet, because these boring subjects are wrapped in an exciting game!

The gameplay is inspired by the Scorched Earth/Worms PC games of yore with the controls brought into the 21st century. Add to it a Peggle style bounce risk-reward mechanic that adds depth and thrill to the proceedings.

EcoSaviors has the player helping people around the world coordinate the reversal of the ecological fortune of planet Earth. Aliens have deemed the human race as useless caretakers of the planet and proceeded to destroy all the man-made stuff then eliminate us. Mercifully, the aliens saw our desperate cries and have given us one last chance to fix the planet. Unfortunately, most of the telecommunication networks have been destroyed. So its up to the player to sort out messages manually by aiming and charging packets to the right person while avoiding stuff that mess up with your delivery.

The game was made to be an entry to Whosegame.com’s Serious Games Contest in which you have to choose between three goals.

• improve your knowledge in the telecommunications field
• be an eco-citizen with the help of telecommunications
• acting against isolation and exclusion thanks to telecommunications

One packet coming up!

Being greedy little SOBs, we designed a game that addressed all three goals and thus EcoSaviors was made. The game is a diorama of the concept of telecommunications (how it helps us become united, coordinated and much more effective) and the message that WE need to get our shit together to fix this planet. So yeah, as far as serious games go, that is f$#king serious.

The game has representations of world leaders, scientist communities and engineers exchanging data required to put their plans into motion. The players have these stars that stand for reputation, bungle it and the people will not be pleased. Each successful transfer nets you points which you can then use to restore your reputation (bribes! realistic this game is) OR fund the next phase of Earth’s ecological rehabilitation. The bounce mechanic enables players to have micro decisions to shoot directly and get easy scores OR bounce it off to get more points but risk losing the packet.

Concepts of clouds distorting packets, storms totally eliminating packets, satellites, switches, routers, broadcasting, laptop, cellphone, radio communication, etc are all in the game. In it is also the infocards. An openly available set of pop-ups that contain useful researched information about game objects. This is available at all time even in the main menu. There is also the unlock stages found in the story mode’s level select. You can skip ahead and play later stages if you want. We did this with our past game Keyboard ActionHero but it now comes with a developer’s warning. I am somehow against locking content but I am aware of the psychological stimulant that is earning things in game. This is our compromise.

Worth talking about is the project screen and how it evolves the background scenery. Hover over the blocks and you will get information about possible solutions to different aspects of the ecology problem. This took me awhile to research and to tie to the scenery. But its something that added significant educational value to the game so totally worth it.

So without further ado, here is Cavalcade Games’ newest offering EcoSaviors.

If you can spare a couple of minutes, please register at whosegame.com and vote for a game(preferably ours!) and in each category.