Category: Serious Game Ideas

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.

• Plant growing
  • Never ending cycle with propagation
  • Video game or IRL
• Mark off the people who die in your yearbook until either you die or everyone else dies
• Endlessly decorating your room (always buying new things, seasons, etc.)
  • This could be a video game too, keep buying and decorating your room
• Some kind of merging game 
• Layering clothing game until it essentially fills up the whole screen
• Buying a hamster, dies in a weird way, get a new hamster video game
• Squirrel endless falling game, avoid branches
• Game where you add tiles, take away, and rearrange tiles
  • Maybe where you make an artwork 
• Tabletop game where you have a canvas where you just keep taking turns building an artwork
• Neverending grading simulator 
• Just mixing paint colors
• Blowing out birthday candles every year, you just keep gaining more and more 
• Fill a bowl of rice, constant clicking 
• Making a sauce, with other sauces and ingredients and keep adding ingredients forever but still trying to get it to taste good
  • Based on Good Mythical Morning 
  • Could be a video game 
  • Mixing potions in the bathtub with a million soaps and perfumes 
• Couch just keeps accumulating toys
• Endlessly changing your hair

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

Brayden, Carson, Tori, Alana

Nightclub Simulator

Whenever you tap, your character dances to the beat. Doing so long enough will reward you with a drink to continue dancing.

Paper Shredder Simulator

The player taps the screen in order to put paper into the paper shredder. Once the bin is filled you can sell the scrap paper to purchase a bigger bin or fancier paper to shred  

Song Creator

User will tap an instrument of their choice to play to the audience. You gain money by getting tips and use that to buy other instruments that pay out more. You can invite your friends to combine the instruments together to make a band that results in a higher payout.

Happy Cat

You tap to feed the cat lasagna until the cat pops. You get money for each cat popped. New cats can eat more and earns more money per click  

Counting Up

The  player clicks their screen, which starts as a blank white with a black “0”. For each time they click, the number goes up in value by one. The game will save your number if you close it, and will continue to go up one number for each singular click you give it. There is no limit to how many times you can click. 

9-5

You are an assembly line worker at a factory. You must work your shift in real time (from 9-5) doing a single monotonous task. The player can choose what point of the assembly process they want to work that day, but are stuck to the position they choose once selected. 

Water Bucket Simulator

You tap the screen for a drop of water to fall into a bucket. Once you fill the bucket up you get a new one and do it again.