Category: Serious Game Ideas

• Drag Queen Dress Up – In this game, you play as drag queens getting ready for shows and events. You get to pick hair, makeup, and outfits, but you also have to attend events like visiting a children’s hospital, doing a book reading, brunch, etc. This game is to reduce the stigma that drag queens have, with the media believing that all drag queens are sexualized (some definitely are, but not all), etc. 
• Realistic Driving Sim – A driving simulation where there are lot of random road things that come up that will potentially damage your car—potholes, random objects, etc. The lower the car that you drive in the game, the harder it is to drive without getting some serious damage. 
• Summer Camp – a game where you play as a teen day camp counselor that needs to navigate the tricky world of caring for and watching children with 0 prior experience. You don’t have training for children with intellectual and physical disabilities, which makes caring for those children even harder, all while managing 20 other children. Your goal is to make sure that all children have a happy and good time. The game would expose some of the children’s “backstories” throughout the game, like what their athome life is like, and you may need to make the decision to report some not great things you hear. This game is based on my experience with being a day camp counselor and seeing that some of the children that I worked with really needed that experience and that that was what they had to look forward to during the day. I learned about some of the backgrounds of abuse that they had and it absolutely broke my heart. However, it was a difficult experience because I wanted to try to make sure that all the children had a great time, but I was unprepared for a lot of the situations that arose, since I was just a teenager myself. (Sara also helped inspire this game with her prototype about not knowing what others are going through!!)
• Safe Food Practices – a tabletop game where you interact with actual food pieces (very interactive like the children’s play food sets or interactive children’s books) to complete certain cooking tasks to make a dish. Another player plays as the inspector as you complete these tasks and they won’t tell you what they are looking for, but they will let you know when you failed to complete the task in an unsafe manner. In this way, players must be extra careful with how they handle the food, as anything they do wrong could get their restaurant shut down. While this sounds like a silly game, I think this game could be important if I incorporate actual safe and unsafe food practices into the game and provide a little bit of background information on it. 
• It Could Be Anyone of Us – A game (very vague at this point) about not to trust everyone that you meet. You must make decisions to go along with different strangers, however you don’t know their actual backgrounds. Someone could be a serial killer, or just a flat out mean dude. Based on who you decide to trust, your actions will have consequences. I see this as a card game, but other than that, I’m not sold on any mechanics. 

1. RGB: A game where players race to create a specific color pattern using colored tiles. Each player has a small board and a deck of color cards, each showing a different pattern. The goal is to match the pattern shown on the card using the tiles, but the tiles are drawn randomly.
2. Maize: Players try to escape from a maze before the other players, but they can only move based on a limited number of dice rolls that tell them how far they can move and in what direction. If a 1 is rolled, the player doesn’t move but gets to draw a card for certain items that can be used in game.
3. Stack’d: A competitive stacking game where players must stack objects based on a random card. The challenge could be stacking in specific patterns, building the tallest tower, or balancing objects.

1. Players take on the roles of characters who are experiencing challenges outside their usual reality. Each level is a different scenario where the player must complete tasks while dealing with the limitations of their character’s situation. The objective is to navigate the world and its challenges by understanding and overcoming barriers that others face every day.
2. This narrative-driven game lets players experience stories of various characters from different backgrounds. Each character has a backstory, and players interact with them to build relationships, solving puzzles or helping them through life challenges. Players must learn to listen and respond, using dialog choices that reflect understanding and compassion.
3. Players are tasked with conflicts between two groups or individuals who have opposing beliefs. They must facilitate understanding, find common ground, and propose solutions that benefit both sides. Success in the game depends on the player’s ability to listen to both sides.
4. In this puzzle game, players connect pieces of a heart-shaped puzzle by guiding the emotions of characters. Each piece of the heart represents a different character’s journey, and players must work through these emotions to heal relationships. Players must navigate through obstacles, building empathy by learning the motivations, fears, and desires of the characters they encounter.
5. Players experience the same events from the perspective of multiple people, where each character is affected by the situation in different ways. For example, during a natural disaster, players might experience it as a rescuer, a survivor, and a displaced family member. The game asks players to switch between perspectives and understand how individuals perceive the same event differently, teaching players to view the world through others’ eyes and make decisions that consider multiple viewpoints.

1. An empathy game disguised as a dress up game – In this game, you literally see what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes. You dress your character up for different occasions and events however your outfit options will be limited based on who you are playing as, as some characters may have more resources than others. This game could also explore dressing for different religions to not only provide a little bit of education about different religions but make people more familiar with religious garments and their purpose.
   1. Wrinkle: You play this game IRL and report your findings. You are assigned or choose the lifestyle of another person to emulate and your clothing choices must reflect that to see how you may be treated differently or not. For instance, there are certain items of clothing that you may not be able to wear as they would be out of the price range for your particular persona.
2. Dog’s Life – This game explores empathy through the perspective of a dog. You are home alone almost all day until your human comes back home (where did they even go??) and your human accidentally steps on you, but to you it felt purposeful. Your human decided to go on a run without you (ultimate betrayal). This game would explore the little interactions that humans have with their animals that humans don’t often think about. To the dog, you are their whole world, they absolutely need you. For a human though, they obviously love them, but their lives also have so much more. 
3. Blindness Platformer – A platformer game where you play and experience the game first normally, then will replay levels or the whole game with limited visibility with different types of blindness and color blindness. You see how this affects the game and you learn a little bit more about the different types of blindness. This is designed to get people to be more empathetic towards people with these disabilities. 
4. Underdeveloped Country Simulator – This game would allow you to play as someone growing up in an underdeveloped country. You want to stay alive as long as possible, but you will be faced with many challenges. This could include food and water scarcity. This game will also explore different forms of cultural entertainment, because you still want to “enjoy” life. Players will learn more about the country and their culture, as well as some of the unique challenges of underdeveloped countries. This will make people consider the things that we often take for granted. 
5. Realistic Food Service Game – This game will present the food service industry in a more realistic manner to make players more empathetic of the people who are serving them and greeting them at restaurants. It will explore what it is like to have to live off of tips, how poorly some customers treat servers, etc. 

1. Walk in My Shoes: Players live as someone different (refugee, single parent, etc.). They make tough choices about daily life and see the consequences.
2. Echoes of War: Players are civilians in a war. They make moral choices and see how war affects everyone.
3. Through Their Eyes: Players see the world with disabilities (blindness, deafness, autism). They learn to understand different abilities.
4. Chain of Kindness: Players do kind things that affect the game. It shows how small acts matter.
5. The Stranger’s Story (ARG): Players get messages from someone who needs help. They solve puzzles and work together to help. It mixes real life and fiction to build empathy. It uses real-world clues and actions to make the story feel real and encourage players to care.

The Stranger’s Story

How It Works:
Players receive a cryptic message, email, or social media post from a person who seems to need help.
Using real-world interactions (e.g., visiting a certain location, researching online, or collaborating with other players), they uncover pieces of the person’s story.
The game changes dynamically based on how the player responds—offering support, ignoring the message, or taking different paths.

Core Themes & Impact:
Players become part of a living narrative where their choices determine how the “stranger” (a fictional but believable character) overcomes their struggles.
Designed to promote real-world awareness, such as homelessness, mental health, or immigration challenges.
Uses player collaboration and real-life locations to foster engagement, making empathy an active and immersive experience.

Climate Change

A city-building strategy game where players must balance economic growth with environmental responsibility.
Players make decisions about energy use, transportation, and industry, with real-time consequences on pollution and climate stability.
The goal is to create a prosperous city while minimizing carbon emissions, showing how policy choices impact the environment.

Energy Transition

Players transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy while managing economic stability and political pushback. Unexpected events like oil shortages, climate disasters, and technological breakthroughs shift the landscape.

Political Engagement & Misinformation Awareness

Players must fact-check news, debate with NPCs, and rally citizens to vote based on policies rather than rhetoric. The game highlights the impact of voter participation and how misinformation spreads.

Global Resource Management

Players make ethical choices about water distribution, trade, and conservation. Real-world statistics shape the game mechanics, making the experience educational and impactful.

Waste Management

Players take on roles (Recyclers, Landfill Lords, Compost Rebels) and strategize to reduce waste while sabotaging competitors. It subtly educates about recycling, waste production, and circular economies.

1. The “Sell Me This” Challenge

• Objective: Players take turns being the “seller” and the “buyer.” The seller must convince the buyer to purchase an item using their persuasion skills.
• How to Play:
  • The seller is given an everyday object (or a random item picked from the room).
  • They have 2 minutes to persuade the buyer why they should buy it, focusing on the benefits, features, or imaginative uses of the item.
  • After each round, the buyer provides feedback on what worked or didn’t.

2. The Debate Duel

• Objective: Engage in friendly debates where players must persuade others to agree with their viewpoint on a random topic.
• How to Play:
  • Players randomly choose a topic, such as “Best movie of all time” or “Is pineapple on pizza acceptable?”
  • Two players are selected to debate, each defending their stance with persuasive arguments.
  • At the end of the debate, the rest of the players vote on which debater was more convincing.

3. The “Persuade the Judge”

• Objective: One player plays the “judge,” and the others must try to persuade them to make a decision in their favor.
• How to Play:
  • A situation is set up where players need to convince the judge. For example: “Why should I let you borrow my car for the weekend?” or “Convince me why you should get the last slice of pizza.”
  • Each player gets a limited time to present their arguments, after which the judge decides who was most persuasive.

4. Reverse Persuasion

• Objective: Players try to convince others NOT to do something that they initially want to do.
• How to Play:
  • Each player must pick something that others would generally want to do (like “go to the beach” or “eat chocolate”) and try to convince everyone why it’s a bad idea.
  • The more creative or humorous the persuasion, the better.
  • At the end of each round, players vote on who was the most persuasive in talking them out of it.

5. The Ethics Dilemma

• Objective: Players face a moral dilemma and must persuade others to agree with their ethical stance.
• How to Play:
  • The game leader presents a moral or ethical dilemma (e.g., “You find a wallet with money. Do you keep it or return it?”).
  • Players take turns persuading others why their decision is the right one.
  • After everyone has had a chance to persuade, players vote on the most convincing argument.

1. The Wonderful Life of a Carnival Fish – This is a game trying to persuade people that fish, such as gold or beta fish, should not be given out as prizes at carnivals. The player will experience the game through the point of view of the carnival fish and must try to survive as long as possible (a difficult task). Some of the trials that the fish will go through are residing in a too small environment (both in the plastic bag and when taken home), potentially placed with some other fish that are hostile, with unsafe aquarium decorations, unclean water, not acclimated to new water, etc. 
2. Well, What Was She Wearing? – This game is based on CAPSEA’s “What Were You Wearing?” Exhibit that displayed the clothing that people were wearing when they were SA’ed. This challenges the expectations that people are “asking for it” if they dress a certain way. It also shows that people could be wearing anything and it would still happen to them. The game adaptation of this would have different clothing options and people are to try to “guess”. This is to persuade people that it doesn’t matter the clothing that people wear, people get SA’ed just for existing and it is not their fault, especially in regards to their fashion choices. I think that this game would be difficult to pull off because of how sensitive this topic is, but I think that it would help give a little bit more awareness to victims.
3. Fast Fashion Game (needs a better name) – At the beginning of every turn, a fashion micro trend is determined (could be determined by a spinner or cards). This trend determines the clothing items that you want to have in your wardrobe. Anything clothing that you have that is not relevant to the trend (potentially excluding some staple clothing items), goes to the landfill. Eventually the landfill will just pile up with a lot of clothing items and it will represent some of the environmental implications of fast fashion. More of the ethics of fast fashion could also be implemented into the game play. This game is to persuade people not to fall victim to fast fashion microtrends and try not to support companies like Shein.
4. Toxic Friends – A game about toxic friends where you are in toxic relationships where it is impacting your ability to thrive in the game. You have to recognize these bad relationships and you have to cut them off in order to be able 2 succeed further in the game however there may be some implications when you cut these friends off for instance they might blackmail you but in the end cutting them off is probably going to be more of a benefit then something hurting. The persuasion element of this is for players to assess the relationships IRL and not to stay with the people that are harming you more than benefiting you. 
5. Art Activism – A game to persuade people that art can be a powerful tool for social causes and activism. This could be a board game where you must fight for a particular social cause and strategically use artwork to do that. The game could include real examples of art with a social purpose like Picasso’s Guernica, the Mexican Muralist movement, some of Banksy’s work, etc. Some of the mechanics could include conducting research and collecting art materials.
6. Golf Course Game – This game would be to persuade people that golf courses are environmentally taxing in numerous ways. The game could include elements of real golf where players have to putt a golf ball, but the longer you take to get the ball in the hole, the more your character begins to take note of some of the destruction around you (deforestation, water/fertilizer/pesticide runoff, etc.). 
7. Earth Day – A game for younger children about Earth Day and teaching them the importance of caring about the Earth and taking care of it. This could be based on my children’s book that I wrote. 
8. Mindful Energy Consumption (idea from last semester) – Game to conserve the most energy on campus – Chatham University did a game like this a few years back, promoting sustainability and energy conservation. It was a competition between floors in a dorm building to see who could conserve the most energy per floor. Because of the way the buildings were set up, they could go in and see per floor how much energy was being consumed. There was also some incentive like a prize for the floor to win. I also believe they had social media accounts or an online tracker set up so that the floors could see their progress and communicate with other floors. One issue with this was that some students, especially those who didn’t like their CA, would try to sabotage the results of other floors, constantly turning on lights. One benefit of this was that the school was able to recognize that students weren’t using their ovens (I believe) enough and they were removed from the dorms. This also helps eliminate unnecessary energy consumption and makes students realize the difference turning off and unplugging certain things can make.
   1. For RMU to employ this, I think that it would need to be a competition between the different residence buildings and not particular floors. I think that would help to eliminate people sabotaging other floors in the same building. This would also have to have a time limit; for instance, 1 week (A good week would maybe be the week of Earth Day??). Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about how to measure energy consumption to say for certain how the results would be tracked, especially in RMU’s system. There would, however, need to be a really good prize to encourage students to actually participate. 
   2. New idea – Maybe have this be a digital game where online users compete to have lowest energy consumption. It would likely require a lot of honesty as people would have to manually report how much energy they are consuming. It could also just be roughly calculated by people reporting how much they use a certain thing in their house. 

Game about Green Final Disposition – In this game, you own and operate a funeral home and service place that is trying it’s hardest to be eco-friendly. You will have multiple options for final disposition for the deceased and must convince their living relatives to opt for more eco friendly options. It becomes even more tricky because you don’t want to disrespect someone’s dying wishes or disrespect the family’s processing of death. There could be a CO2 tracker to show how much with each deceased person as well as other key environmental factors. Some of the methods that would be included would be green burial, traditional burial, alkaline hydrolysis, human composting, and cremation. This would be to persuade people that environmental factors should be considered when making a decision about what you want to happen to your body when you’re gone.

Pollution Simulator

In this game, your goal is to either pollute the earth or to fight pollution. On the Pollution side of the game, you get to see which products cause the most pollution. On the fighting pollution side of the game, you get to fight it in ways that you think might help but do just as much damage (cough cough electric cars).

Presidential Race

In this game, you basically have to build a plot to beat the other political party. You do this by researching weak / strong points in the others argument. But in the process of doing this, you may end up realizing that you don’t support certain aspects of a political party and could end up fighting on the other side by the end of it.

Electric Racing

In this game, it’s a simple racing game that would be similar to Forza, NFS, etc. But in this game, all the cars are electric rather than a traditional combustion engine. There is barely any sound in the game due to no engines, the cars understeer like crazy due to the weight of the battery, and the wrecks are boring because no gasoline is exploding. This changes the players mind about electric vs. gas cars since they realize how boring they are.

Deepfake

Players work as detectives by analyzing news, social media, and videos to find out what news is fake. As players uncover tactics that are used to fake media, they gain tools they can use to recognize fake news. This can help encourage skepticism of misinformation so people are not as gullible as they are now.

ICE Simulator

In this game, you play as an ICE officer and do what they do best. But during this, you have to determine which immigrants should and should not be deported. This may seem like a controversial game, but the catch is that the people you are trying to find can either be really good or really bad people. So you may either have a civilized conversation and come to an agreement, or you might be in a gun fight. The aim of this game is to spread awareness on what is going on and to simply make the player change their attitude for good or worse.

1. Recycle City – This game will include a main character whos goal is to recycle as much as possible because it helps them finantially in the game. it is almost a source of curancy. I chose this michanic because i want the people who play this game to realize that recycling can help not only the earth but your pockets too.
2. Ballet Barrage – In this game my goal is to get people to vote. To do this i will highlight the concequences of not voting ( obviously over exaggerate them ) and show them the power one vote can have on an outcome.
3. Soul Food – This game will persuade people to eat better by giving them speed boosts when they chose a vegitable over a brownie while moving through the map. (subway surfers type of game)
4. Electric Bill – In this game the main character “Bill” has to keep his houses energy bill down or he loses. you have to run around the house turing lights off that your antagonist son keeps leaving on. it gets harder and faster as time goes on.
5. Smart Spending – In this game you will simulate someone going through life making smart finantial decistions and good choices lead to long term wealth and bad decitions lead to bankruptcy.

My idea is going to stem off my unboxing game where you unbox things satisfyingly and get cooler tools and cooler boxes to unbox. my wrinkle is going to be adding the amazon logo to everybox to get people to purchase things from amazon. Maybe if you unbox so many boxes in game then you get a free purchase from amazon under $20.

Game 1: Collect cans on the street and go from homeless to rich and try and see how rich you can get. 

Game 2: Amazing Amazon. Fill boxes and complete orders to get cooler boxes and more complex orders. 

Game 3: Unboxing game where you unbox packages and get new tools to unbox it. 

Game 4: you are given a prompt with materials and you have to go out and find those recourses to build that certain thing

Game 5: Pop it. If you do it before the timer runs out then  you get a cooler pop it.