 surf life saving queensland and the department of agriculture and fisheries are promoting sharksmart messages to primary school aged children in a 12 month educational program they asked us to develop an interactive game that educates kids about sharks and the simple things they can do at the beach to stay safe from shark related incidents kids are typically more interested in sharks than afraid of them so we wanted to nurture that by making the game educational and fun rather than fear based armed with our behaviour change expertise we empowered them with knowledge about how sharks behave such as their feeding times where they live and how they hunt so the kids can make smart choices we consulted with primary school teachers to develop the games tone and language ensuring it was as age appropriate and engaging as possible there are so many ways to approach sharksmart behaviours so we created not one game but two mini games with three modes the first game beach explorer is an open world exploration game set on a beach there are items scattered across the beach like flags water debris and rips that prompt questions related to sharksmart behaviours if the player answers correctly theyre rewarded with a beach badge this game is split into two modes explorer mode and race mode the second game which shark are you asks the players questions about their preferences and human experiences that relate to the behaviours of tiger bull white and hammerhead sharks based on their responses each player is assigned one of the four shark types and provided information about that shark the whole project is elevated by nwos trademark custom illustration and animation which really brings the beach to life we really blew this brief out of the water for a limited budget we built two games from scratch complete with a catchy custom theme song projects like these fun and engaging but with real purpose are why we get out of bed every morning the whole process from conception to delivery was really collaborative with the clients and that definitely shows in the final product 