Video game
VR experience
AR app
To help us achieve our advocacy and knowledge mobilization goals we are developing immersive experiences that will facilitate learning and engagement with climate change and climate action among young people as well as adults. To date, we are developing a video game for young people and a VR/AR experience for adults.
Kibou | The Guiding Light
“Kibou | the Guiding Light” is a PC game designed to help young people explore the intersections of climate change and mental health and build emotional literacy and strength. In this transformative gaming experience, players will strengthen their introspective abilities, develop a deeper appreciation for the natural environment, and learn how to practice mindfulness and meditation. Furthermore, by embarking on quests and solving puzzles, players will complicate their understanding of climate justice issues and will learn how to engage with meaningful climate action.
Feeling Kibou: An VR Experience
In the context of a psychology graduate course on climate change and mental health taught at Carleton University in the winter of 2024, we developed the bible for an immersive learning experience to be implemented in a VR environment.
“Feeling Kibou: A VR Experience” was imagined for adult learners who worry about how climate change may be impacting younger generations and would like to learn how to become better allies of the young people in their lives.
Set in the same backdrop of the video game, the VR experience unfolds on the fictional planet Kibou that is inhabited by the Mochis, imaginary creatures who are trying to survive an impending climate catastrophe. Through the guided educational journey, users learn why young people struggle to act on climate change, how eco-anxiety and other climate emotions affect well-being of children and youth, and what they can do to cope with these feelings. Users will also learn important skills such as how to have conversations about climate change with young people of various ages and how to gain awareness of their own climate-related emotions and barriers to engagement with climate action. The experience is designed to benefit both the adult user and the young people they care about.
Feeling Kibou: The AR App
While developing the bible for the VR experience, we conducted preliminary research with target users, and learnt that, to have real value to them, many of the adult learners we interreacted with felt the need for the VR experience to extend into the real world. This made us consider adding an augmented reality (AR) component to our VR experiences. We are now in the ideation stage for developing an AR app that will allow users to bring Feeling Kibou into their physical and social spaces, beyond the VR medium.
