Screen Grab of Main Interface for the Environmental Learning Game
Different rivers have different water quality, and different benthic invertebrates live in them. These invertebrates are commonly known as “Kawa Mushi” in Japanese. Kawa means river, and Mushi means insect. The river insects in MushiRiver are displayed as 3D models with family-level characteristics, rather than species-level accuracy. This taxonomic representation is in accordance with the average score method. Average score is a water quality assessment method that uses river insects to determine water quality by identifying river insects by family. By displaying the data at the family level, MushiRiver can also be used in multiple countries.
The videos above show the essence of the game without interactivity. The actual downloadable game (PC only) and info about it are located at http://www.u-gakugei.ac.jp/~diatom/en/mushiriver/index.html
Basically, the mouse is used to travel through different types of rivers in an attempt to find aquatic insects that live in such environments. Each river has a unique soundtrack and each insect emits its own sound that can assist in locating it. Right-clicking the mouse activates an interface that provides hints and species information. Clicking on a map provides a navigation marker to assist in efficiently traveling to different parts of the river ecosystem. As insects are collected, an iconed flag pops up as an indicator that an insect was found, and the interface adjusts to show how many have been collected in a river.
It is important to note that aquatic invertebrates are strong indicators of water quality. Species differ in each river type. Actually the greatest diversity of species exists in slightly polluted water, not the cleanest water (which has less nutrients). This game is an extension of SimRiver in which microorganisms called diatoms are collected as the indicators of water quality. Both of these games are available for use around the world to study water quality, primarily in school systems. In fact, SimRiver has been translated to over twenty languages.
Japanese Team:
Kazuhiro KATO: Ecological Consultant
Kengo SATOMI: Project Assistant
Shigeki MAYAMA: Project Manager, Scientific Consultant
Tomoyasu YOSHITOMI: River Photo
US Team:
Bill GORCICA: Art Director/Graphic Designer, 3D Modeler
Mark GILL: Software Lead
Marty FITZER: Game Developer
Matt JULIUS: Scientific Consultant
Joseph BIGELOW: Sound Designer
Mackenzie BOECK: Soundtrack Composer