The Green My Place serious game for the SAVE ENERGY project has passed prototyping and has begun full-scale user testing. From this target-audience feedback, the game development will progress into the stage known in industry as ‘polishing’.
At present, there are 8 mini-games in development. The one closest to completion is called Electrickery, and features a brand new look and feel which will be replicated in all the games by the latest member of the team, graphic artist Zhang Jiongkai. The team is also running some game testing in the schools, under direct supervision of the development team for the first time at the moment. 
After the graphics is in place each mini-game will be completed with an instruction movie: an interactive, in-depth demonstration of the game play. This will help players understand and visualize the essence of each game. The same techniques and format are used to create each mini-game demo, to keep them uniform and comprehensible.
Uniformity is important in graphical aspects as well, so a universal User Interface design is being developed that will work for each mini-game. This means the same layout of the game field, same frame and buttons and similar game-flow for every game.
Since SAVE ENERGY is multinational, cultural differences must be considered to ensure conformation of measurement units, objects and appliances, and currencies to the 5 pilot countries. This issue includes language. Localisation will begin with the Finnish translation of the games and web site for local testing. Localisation implies that – for example – each game has one xml file to supply text to the engine, and only that file needs to change to suit each country. In the next few weeks will be several testing sessions with pupils from the Helsinki schools with the already translated mini-games.
A new server and domain name have been set up, so the new, compelling Green My Place website will be soon visible here:
To know exactly when the Green My Place site goes live, and to see ongoing updates about the game development, subscribe to serious game blog at:
