Stop Disasters!

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)

This is a game that teaches you about disaster prevention for five natural disasters: tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes. The player acts as an urban planner for a region that is vulnerable to a known natural disaster and must use a limited budget to proactively protect the town. Because the player gets to step into a role they would not normally play, this is make-believe play, and there is also an aspect of chance—players do not know where on their map the disaster will originate.

Mechanics

In the most basic sense, Stop Disasters! is a numbers game. At the beginning of the game, players can choose a difficulty level that determines their town population, max budget, and time to prepare. Players then have a specific budget which they must use to house a specific number of residents and build a specific number of schools and hospitals before they can trigger the natural disaster. All of these mechanics are summarized in a graphic below.

Construction projects follow their own set of rules—they come with a price, maximum occupancy (in the case of housing projects), and quality of protection against the disaster.

In addition, the game defines mechanics for the landscape itself. Each square of the map has a designated risk level depending on its proximity to water, rocks, and flammable objects, as well as its height above sea level.

Houses and buildings have their own risk level, which can be lowered by purchasing extra protections on an individual building by building basis.

When the time limit is reached, or when the player chooses to begin the natural disaster, the natural disaster hits, and it spreads based on the risk level of each tile. I presume that the % risk for each tile is the percent random chance that the wildfire burns down the tile if it reaches it. If the wildfire burns down homes, its residents may or may not die based on the risk mechanic. Once the disaster ends, the numbers are tallied, and the game determines your final score based on total damage cost, number of residents injured, number of residents killed, number of buildings destroyed, budget remaining, key facts found, and other relevant goals.

Dynamics

The dynamics of the game include the following: constructing new structures and defenses, upgrading existing structures’ protections, gauging the risk of an area, making budgetary judgment calls, reading natural disaster prevention facts, and watching the natural disaster occur.

Aesthetics

There are three primary aesthetic goals I noticed while playing the game: fantasy, challenge, and discovery. As part of the make-believe aspect of the game, there is the fantasy fun of getting to act as a town planner. There is also the challenge of choosing which structures and protections to invest in on a limited budget. And lastly, there is the discovery of what precautions we can take to defend against specific natural disasters. Also, because aesthetics refers to emotional responses in a player, I want to note that as the image below shares, it was scary watching the natural disaster happen!

Outcomes

Through the discovery aesthetic—discovering prevention techniques for a specific natural disaster—I learned how to protect my own home, or my community, from wildfires (information outcome). Also, through the fear I felt in watching the fire spread, I changed my attitude about a natural disaster I’ve never experienced before. I did not realize how scary wildfires were, and I will now make sure to take relevant precautions if I live in an area susceptible to wildfires! I also feel more prepared in how to deal with new natural disasters and how to advise others in dealing with natural disasters (self-efficacy outcome). Overall, the game was very educational! I thought it had many successful outcomes.