Our team of 4 people was brainstorming ideas to work on for the night. We came up with good ideas but nothing that left our palms sweating. Given that we as a team had a limited skill set, it was imperative for us to not only come up with an idea that we could actually work on together but to have one that excited us as well. It was during the brainstorming session that we noticed three trash cans nearby labelled for different types of waste. These cans reminded us of simple lessons we had learned over the course of our lives about proper waste management, which in turn drew our thoughts to the various life lessons we had learned in and outside of school -- as well as why some things were learned in school as opposed to outside of it. What differentiated a productive educational experience from an unproductive one? It was in this thinking that our team had a revelation: Why don't we come up with a product that would make sustainability education in school more engaging? Instead of the common 'teacher explains to the student and retains little' learning model, why don't we make it the 'student has fun, and remembers forever' learning model? And so, we set out to produce a game that would stimulate a young school student's creativity toward acting sustainably while also having a fun time.

And so began our night-long journey to build a couple of mini-games to teach students about sustainability in the hopes that our efforts could be built upon in the future to be more in-depth and engaging, and therefore more effective. One of the mini-games we created involves categorizing waste and throwing them in different trashcans. Through it, we hope to leave the players with experience so that in that split second where they are faced with a trash can and a recycling bin and won't spend any effort deliberating which can to throw it in, they don't simply opt for the trash can by default. We also hope to foster an appreciation for how simple the process can be. The other game we developed -- featuring an atmosphere full of launched trees tasked with absorbing the carbon dioxide trapped up there -- keeps in line with three of our themes: education, where kids learn that plants perform the essential role of absorbing carbon dioxide; silliness, because our audience is children and sillier things have a way of sticking in their brains; and finally, madness, considering this hackathon theme was MadHacks Carbon, featuring the "the wacky, the original, and the downright impossible". We also added a mini-quiz at the end of the games because we envision that this type of game would be paired with supplementary materials in schools.

We built our game using the Unity game engine, which utilizes C# scripts to drive interactions between game objects and form relationships between them. This required us to learn C# broadly as well as in context of how Unity specifically implements it. Each line of code was written during the 22 hours duration and is unique to this game. No material was implemented through the internet.

Even though our group hardly knew anything about game design, we decided to spend half our time trying to master the unity game engine. It was not an easy task, but we helped each other with concepts we did not understand. The other issues involved the collaboration part of the project - we would be lying if we said we didn't spend a sizeable amount of time just troubleshooting and syncing changes to the shared project design. But nothing beats the challenge that everyone at the hackathon would be facing: staying awake and completing the project in 24 hours!

Our game design is admittedly not optimal. However, thinking of a feasible idea that is original and impactful at the same time is something that we are extremely proud of. To learn enough unity to make two games in a single night is serious stuff for us. Levi is especially pleased with the way the launched trees orbit the little Earth icon in the second mini-game and how the icon starts out black before gradually lightening as the pollutants are cleared. Our best accomplishment of the night, though, was having fun, and working in unity with each other. Pun intended :)

Of course, games are not the only way of engaging students. Kids also love to play outdoor games, watch movies, develop relationships with friends, etc. Keeping this in mind, we would love create ways to scale up our current model to include more games teaching a variety of topics (not just sustainability) an in more depth. We would also like to work in approaches considering all beneficial aspects of life -- not just what an individual can gain from some time sitting alone at a computer. This product could be marketed to the public and private schools of America. With a growing emphasis on a sustainable lifestyle and the costs of ignoring the effects of unsustainable practices (in accordance with the Fourth National Climate Assessment at nca2018.globalchange.gov), our project would be tempting for the US government to implement in its schools.