Are you ready for the future? You can find out in EnerCities, a game about energy and sustainability. You start with a small village and a bit of land, and grow your town to a level 5 metropolis. Be careful to balance your People, Planet and Profit – and make sure you supply the growing city with sufficient energy. Monitor your natural resources carefully, and spend your money wisely.
Buildings and innovations
The game has four levels. Each level unlocks new buildings. Start with simple suburban plots, light industrial buildings and the choice between windmills or a small coal plant. Further levels introduce heavy industry, commercial district, forests, urban district, and new energy buildings. The last level unlocks the powerful Super Structures, like the Nuclear Fusion plant.
European Commission
The project is funded by the Intelligent Energy program of the European Commission, and aims to improve the awareness of energy issues among young people. It will be rolled out by the project partners on schools in the UK, Netherlands, Slovenia, Greece, Germany and Spain.
Paladin is responsible for development of the game and the online community platform. We have worked on the game throughout most of 2009. The initial proposal was sent out in 2007, and the project lasted until 2011. This makes it by far the biggest game Paladin has ever released.
The entire project has a budget of €1.4M, of which 75% is funded by the European Commission under the IEEA2007 program.
Get started!
You can play the game directly on EnerCities.eu and on Facebook. If you are a teacher, feel free to use the game in your lessons, or use the Teacher Toolbox for additional support and information.
Rollout and impact
The Enercities project has been implemented in over 120 European education institutions, and is available in six languages. Additional translations are currently being developed. There is an online community and several group competitions on local and European levels have been organized to roll out the game. EnerCities has over 75.000 players and is still being played daily.
Independent research has shown that by playing the game, students show an increase in awareness of energy issues and a significant increase in willingness to save energy at home. For more information about this research please refer to:
- E-Learning paper with preliminary results
- Qeam – the coordinator for impact research
Consortium
ROC Nijmegen – Project Coordinator
Qeam – Initiator, impact research coordination
Paladin Studios – Game developer
Lancaster & Morecambe College – Marketing, Rollout
Akademie Klausenhof – Rollout
Unified Vocational Training Centre Of Cyclades – Rollout
Ljudska Univerza Velenje – Rollout, Toolbox
Agencia de la Energía de Granada – Rollout, energy parameters