Gamifying Environmental Education: A Primary School Perspective

Through a Serious Game

Edson Kirschhof

, Alexandre Becker

, Gl

enio Descovi

, Alencar Machado

and Vin

ıcius Maran

Laboratory of Ubiquitous, Mobile and Applied Computing (LUMAC), Polytechnic School,

Federal University of Santa Maria, Av. Roraima, 1000, Santa Maria, Brazil

Keywords:

Serious Game, Educational Game, Environmental Education.

Abstract:

Environmental education holds signiﬁcant importance for society, serving as a means to impart to new gen-

erations the principles of living in harmony with nature and cultivating social, moral, and ethical values.

Research in this domain has consistently shown that the early incorporation of environmental education can

yield beneﬁts for individuals and has a lifelong impact. Yet environmental education researchers and practi-

tioners identify early childhood, deﬁned as ages birth to eight, as a particularly crucial time for developing

environmental literacy. This paper presents the creation of a serious game designed to support environmental

education in the early stages of elementary school. The developed game addresses the current trends of mobile

and ﬂexible learning, recognizing the necessity for engaging and challenging materials tailored for children.

Through the assessment of the game, involving 71 users, it became evident that the developed game played

a constructive role in the teaching-learning process. The evaluation encompassed aspects such as usability,

accessibility, playfulness, satisfaction, and knowledge expansion, revealing the positive impact of the game on

these dimensions.

1 INTRODUCTION

Digital technologies contribute greatly to assist us in

our day-to-day tasks. This use has been maximized

in the last years, due to the social isolation to which

we have been subjected, due to the COVID-19 pan-

demic. In this world scenario, education at all levels

and modalities have been forced to improve and inno-

vate teaching and learning processes (Hoofman and

Secord, 2021).

It was already being observed that the education

system needs changes, and in this sense (Shi and Shih,

2015) warned that teachers and students have differ-

ent visions and necessities.

Digital games are present in the daily life of cell

phone users, whether they are adults, young people

or children, combining technology with learning is a

path of no return and in this future, the environmental

theme has relevance and urgency that more and more

https://orcid.org/0009-0001-6397-1205

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6645-3960

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0940-9641

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6334-0120

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1916-8893

study and spread environmental education (Kudryavt-

sev et al., 2012).

Environmental education (EE) is not an isolated

area of knowledge and action. On the contrary, the

context in which it emerged makes clear its purpose

of training agents capable of understanding the inter-

dependence of the various elements that make up the

life support chain, the cause and effect relationships

of human intervention in this chain, of engaging in

prevention and solution of socio-environmental prob-

lems and to create more just forms of existence that

are in tune with the balance of the planet (Jickling

and Wals, 2019).

Environmental education leaves a lasting impres-

sion throughout one’s life. Researchers and practi-

tioners in this ﬁeld emphasize the signiﬁcance of early

childhood, spanning from birth to eight years old, as

a critical period for fostering environmental literacy

(Ardoin and Bowers, 2020).

Based on the context presented above, such as the

precariousness of teaching and lack of tools for en-

vironmental education, this work aims to develop a

serious game for EE, in order to contribute to the dis-

semination of environmental content. To promote the

Kirschhof, E., Becker, A., Descovi, G., Machado, A. and Maran, V.

Gamifying Environmental Education: A Primary School Perspective Through a Serious Game.

DOI: 10.5220/0012617000003693

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2024) - Volume 2, pages 349-360

ISBN: 978-989-758-697-2; ISSN: 2184-5026

349

usage of the game, we developed a support material,

specially adressed to professors, to facilitate the ap-

plication of the game in their classes.

The structure of this work is divided as follows: In

Section 2 the theoretical foundation approaching En-

vironmental Education , Serious games in education

are presented. In Section 3 the serious game devel-

opment process, its skills, methodology and mecha-

nisms are presented. In Section 4 the evaluation pro-

cess is presented. Finally, in Section 5 the conclusions

of the work are presented.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 Environmental Education

The concept of environmental education is related to

formal and informal teaching processes, where indi-

viduals build their socio-environmental values to live

in harmony with nature and society.

Since the emergence of man on our planet, we

have come to modify the relief, climate, soil, air and

seas, in addition to even modifying other species of

plants and animals, or helping in their extinction. For

(Nousheen et al., 2020) nature dominated man in its

beginning, between 50 and 40 thousand years ago,

with only nomadism without accumulation of goods

as its form of survival; with the emergence of agri-

culture, around 10,000 years ago, and from the mas-

tery of agricultural techniques by community mem-

bers, man became sedentary, in addition to developing

concepts about social and political organization.

During the evolution and improvement of nature

management practices, human beings consolidated

their domain and the indiscriminate use of natural re-

sources. Human beings need to understand and learn

to live in harmony with the planet, because in our re-

cent past, in the last 200 years, with the industrial rev-

olution, the degradation processes of the planet have

increased exponentially, on a scale never seen since

the emergence of the man on the planet. The prin-

ciples of environmental education do not advocate

that we should stop developing ourselves economi-

cally and technologically, but rather seek a balance

for sustainable development (Ardoin et al., 2020).

According to the United Nations (UN) (Fritz et al.,

2019), the concept of sustainable development is one

that meets present needs without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

to achieve sustainable development, which are them

Eradicate poverty; Zero hunger and sustainable agri-

culture; health and wellness; quality education; gen-

der equality; clean water and sanitation; clean and af-

fordable energy; decent work and economic growth;

industry, innovation and infrastructure; reduction of

inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; re-

sponsible consumption and production; action against

global climate change; life in water; terrestrial life;

peace, justice and effective institutions; partnerships

and means of implementation.

These goals, as well as other global projects in-

volving environmental issues, aim to protect and pre-

serve life on our planet, for current and future gen-

erations. The ﬁrst step, to seek this balance with the

planet, is the awareness that nature has limits, also

focusing on education, educating the individuals who

make up society, making them sensitive to their envi-

ronment, based on experiences , values and knowl-

edge obtained and lived through an environmental

knowledge (Ardoin et al., 2020).

Environmental knowledge is a political epistemol-

ogy that seeks to give sustainability to life; consti-

tutes knowledge that links the ecological potential and

negentropic productivity of the planet with the cul-

tural creativity of the peoples who inhabit it (Kopnina,

2020).

Everyone has the right to an ecologically balanced

environment, an asset for common use by the peo-

ple and essential to a healthy quality of life, imposing

on the public authorities and the community the duty

to defend and preserve it for present and future gen-

erations. Emphasizing that, the EE aims to dissemi-

nate knowledge about the environment, in the sense of

its conservation and use of resources in a sustainable

way. This constant process, where the whole society

is consciously involved in dealing with the environ-

ment, acquiring knowledge, skills, experiences, val-

ues whose purposes are capable of acting, either in-

dividually or collectively, seeking alternatives and/or

solutions to environmental problems.

Implementing environmental education in schools

can pose several challenges. Some of these challenges

include:

• Resources. Many institutions face budget con-

straints, competing priorities, and limited access

to environmental facilities and experts. This can

lead to a lack of funding, materials, equipment,

time, and space for environmental education pro-

grams;

• Alignment. Integrating environmental education

into various disciplines and levels of education,

from formal to non-formal settings, can be chal-

lenging due to a lack of alignment with existing

curricula and educational priorities;

• Engagement. Some educators may not have suf-

ﬁcient training, support, or incentives to incorpo-

rate environmental education into their curricula

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

350

and pedagogy. This can lead to a lack of student

engagement and interest in environmental issues;

• Changes in Demographics and Experience. En-

vironmental educators must address the demands

of a constantly evolving social and technological

landscape while ensuring that environmental edu-

cation stays relevant to the needs and interests of

the community. This requires continuous adapta-

tion and innovation in educational approaches;

• Effective Integration of Newer Sources of In-

formation with Experiential Learning Oppor-

tunities. With the rapid advancement of technol-

ogy and access to information, it is essential to

effectively integrate newer sources of information

with experiential learning opportunities to provide

a comprehensive environmental education;

• Inadequate Training and Support for Teach-

ers. Teachers may lack the necessary training and

support to effectively deliver environmental edu-

cation, leading to a lack of conﬁdence and com-

petence in this area;

• Overcoming Temporal Perspective. Environ-

mental education is seen as a permanent and con-

tinuous process, and challenges need to be consid-

ered to rethink the continued training of teachers

and seek a continuous improvement in environ-

mental education.

Addressing these challenges requires a concerted

effort from educational institutions, policymakers,

and the broader community to provide the necessary

resources, training, and support for effective environ-

mental education in schools.

2.2 Serious Games

The term serious games is used to delimit a form of

game, aimed at educational or training purposes, both

in schools and in civil and military training institu-

tions. Unlike other media used in education and train-

ing, in a serious game the player is actively involved

and immersed in an experience where his actions and

decisions determine the course of history. In this con-

text serious games can help with new forms of learn-

ing, for this to be effective it is necessary that serious

games have objectives and consequences, as well as

rules (Zhonggen, 2019).

According to (Nadi-Ravandi and Batooli,

2022) Game-Based Learning (GBL) is a pedagogical

methodology that focuses on the development and use

of games in education, thus being integrated within

the form of a serious game, whose objective is not en-

tertainment , but learning. Unlike gamiﬁcation, where

some elements of games are used, such as dis-

putes for points to reach a higher ranking or achieve a

certain reward, then gamiﬁcation is intended to make

a process or daily life of a given individual more

playful and interesting, so it will not necessarily have

all aspects of a serious game, it is usually integrated

into everyday life processes such as in schools or

companies to increase participant engagement.

The development of gamiﬁcation — also referred

to as gamiﬁcation — therefore stems from a rather ob-

vious ﬁnding: human beings are strongly attracted to

games. Over the centuries, practically all known civi-

lizations were associated with some kind of important

competition for the social structure of the community

to which they belonged (Oliveira et al., 2023).

The production of digital educational games has

multiplied in recent years, given the technological de-

velopment that provides users with inﬁnite possibili-

ties of access and choice of games. In the educational

area, games or gamiﬁcation have been used more fre-

quently in order to expand and provide meaningful

learning. For (Yu et al., 2021) “games can be efﬁcient

instructional tools”, in the sense that they provide lu-

dicity to learning, through fun and as facilitators of

learning, in addition to stimulating mental and intel-

lectual functions who plays.

Games are elements of human culture left over

from the dawn of civilization, what differs from cur-

rent games are the digital formats and platforms that

can be used, such as: desktop, smartphones, tablets.

The pedagogical practices used at school take advan-

tage of the playfulness of the game to bring content to

the student in a more dynamic and pleasant way, for

(Acquah and Katz, 2020), however, it is necessary to

be clear that the use of games in education as a sim-

ple adaptation to formal teaching does not guarantee

learning, games alone are not protagonists of mean-

ingful learning, there are other factors that are neces-

sary such as didactic planning, pedagogical mediation

and adaptation to the pedagogical project.

In Environmental Education, it is also possible to

see a growth in the use of games as learning tools,

even though it is not a formal teaching subject, it is

present as a transversal theme and uses gamiﬁcation

resources to work on environmental themes. (Zhu

et al., 2022) in a study on the evaluation of digi-

tal games with educational purposes, that is, games

intended for school, elect some characteristics for a

quality game, ﬁrst the game needs to be accessible

and easy to understand, in the sense that not all users

are gamers, especially in the school environment; the

game must be able to mobilize the senses, involve and

provide a pleasant relationship; and ﬁnally, the game

needs to present premises such as ”problem solving,

Gamifying Environmental Education: A Primary School Perspective Through a Serious Game

351

understanding and managing one’s own learning”

(Zhu et al., 2022).

2.3 Related Work

To evaluate related research, we made a systematic

mapping. The search for related works started with

a search for scientiﬁc articles in repositories (Science

Direct, ACM DL and IEEE Xplore) using the search

string:

"environmental education" ) AND

( "digital game" OR "electronic game " OR

"gamification" OR "m-learning" OR

"serious games" OR "mobile learning" OR

"game-based learning" )

. We ﬁltered the results with two ﬁlters, the ﬁrst be-

ing the publication date ﬁlter between 2016 and 2023,

and the second only research articles, obtaining 62 ar-

ticles at the end of the process. After reading the ab-

stracts of these articles, 14 papers were selected that

contained the theme that is intended to be analyzed,

as shown in Table 1:

Table 1: Search ﬁltering.

Repositories First Publication Research Abstract

Result 2016/2021 Papers Reading

Science Direct 97 50 42 4

ACM DL 24 16 10 4

IEEE Xplore 6 10 10 5

Total 137 76 62 14

The ﬁrst analysis of the articles was the tabulation

of a spreadsheet divided by repository with the arti-

cles of each one, which contained the following data:

Title, Author, year, database, published in keywords

and abstract. From the analysis of these tables, 14 ar-

ticles were selected in the same line of work: a game

under development, developed or tested by third par-

ties, which dealt with the environment.

With the analysis of the works, we divided the

works into groups such as applications based on the

use of information from the Global Positioning Sys-

tem (GPS) with and without the use of augmented re-

ality such as, (Lo and Lai, 2019) developed an interac-

tion application based on augmented reality for learn-

ing about ﬂora species on a student campus, through

a mobile device with a GPS system it is possible to

obtain information about the species, as well as links

to nearby attractions.

(Huang et al., 2022) developed an augmented re-

ality mobile application to be used in parks or natu-

ral environments, when pointing the camera at a plant

species, the user receives information regarding it, as

in (Lo and Lai, 2019). In the study by (Huang et al.,

2022) the results obtained reveal that the use of aug-

mented reality technologies, the emotional impact of

the participants with the proposed themes, generating

a greater learning connection,

Nowadays, the use of social networks is increas-

ingly frequent, which is why in (Pham et al., 2021),

the research group developed an application based on

social networks with interactions of GPS mapping ap-

plications where users interact with each other, based

on posts referring to urban environmental problems

encountered in their daily lives, the aim is to raise

awareness of the protection and conservation of the

environment. The application uses the mechanism of

likes among users as an incentive to classify the most

relevant posts, making the user rise in the ranking.

In general, the vast majority create games based

on protagonists who must somehow perform actions,

and are subject to consequences for these actions,

for (Priyadarshini et al., 2021) environmental edu-

cation is limited to conventional means of education

such as books, documentaries, videos or animations,

a few educational digital games developed to work on

themes related to environmental education, the arti-

cle in question addresses the development and test-

ing of the game Carbon Warrior, which aims to teach

about the carbon footprint, and how it inﬂuences sus-

tainability . Carbon Warrior was developed from a

pedagogical point of view for primary and secondary

school children and teenagers in India, the game uses

a scoring school based on user choices, more sus-

tainable choices generate more carbon credits, the in-

game currency. Among the 10 scenarios stipulated in

the game, the player still has a help button for decision

making and feedback after the end of the scenario.

In (Wang and Nunes, 2019) it was developed with

the premise of being a multidisciplinary educational

game that contains content of geography, Portuguese

language, science, mathematics and environmental

education, the choice of different ethnicities and gen-

ders for the protagonists, in order to promote the in-

clusion and diversity. The game is based on 3 phases

where the player deals with different situations such

as waste separation, waste recovery and the reduction

of waste generation, so the game is based on the use

of the 3Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle), although the

levels of the phases are inverse to the logic of the 3R.

In (Chung-Shing et al., 2020) the research group

used a game based on an indigenous community in

the Amazon region of Peru, where users make local

decisions that inﬂuence local life and the state of con-

servation and preservation of the surrounding forest.

The user is placed in the role of deciding how eco-

tourism should be approached in the region, there is

no mechanism for loss or victory, but with each sce-

nario completed, the player receives feedback on the

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

352

consequences of their actions.

In (Janakiraman et al., 2021) the research group

used a city construction and evolution game based on

resource management, focusing on energy production

issues and their relationship with the environment.

The objective was to analyze whether digital games

can be used to increase environmentally friendly atti-

tudes and behaviors.

Similarly, (Tsai et al., 2020) developed a 3D com-

puter interface game with the intention of prevent-

ing environmental disasters, within the game, the user

must try to achieve the highest possible score, for

this they must consider several factors that inﬂuence

the game, such as money, time, personal interest and

public interest, thus having to protect the city against

ﬂoods in a tower defense game style, research has

shown that the use of serious games increased learn-

ing compared to conventional methods.

In teaching, games can also be used in conjunc-

tion with other digital media resources, as in (Gas-

par et al., 2020), an approach using a serious game

in combination with an explanatory video could help

students learn and understand marine environmental

themes, more speciﬁcally on pollution of the seas, the

study shows that most students liked the approach,

with 82.6% reporting having learned new knowledge,

and 97.8% stating that the learning approach is effec-

tive.

Another group of applications revolve around sto-

ries based on the reality of local communities, as in

(Wang and Nunes, 2019) unlike the other applica-

tions mentioned in other articles, the research group

developed the production in a different way, creating

a collaborative design, listening to a local population

of ﬁshermen to base your game on, both in the story

part, in decision-making and in-game actions. With

this, the presented prototype had a good acceptance

by the local community, its objective was to help in

the understanding of how the individual actions of

each person can affect the environment and the col-

lective. The research carried out showed that digital

games are present in Environmental Education in the

form of different styles of games, with different ap-

proaches and themes related to the environment.

In general, the studies made a contribution to the

future creation of digital games for environmental

education, either through the different ways of ap-

proaching the themes, and also through the style of

the games and the results presented. However, during

the evaluation of related work, the applications shown

were created or tested with a very speciﬁc public in

very limited subjects, thus being a small scope within

all the possibilities related to environmental educa-

tion, the development of the serious game presented

here in this work has the intended to be an applica-

tion available for use by teachers and students with a

greater variety of work options, that is, the teacher can

use it as a wildcard tool in the classroom, adapting its

meaning and use as needed.

3 A SERIOUS GAME FOR EE

3.1 Game Scope

Environmental education starts with the educator, but

it is necessary to promote materials for this to be pos-

sible, the educator alone, within his wide range of

tasks at school, can often end up running out of ways

to update himself or to produce innovative materials.

and new for students. The educator is a reference in

the student’s education, she is the one who should

transmit methodologies to be approached with the ob-

jective of enriching and building knowledge. The ed-

ucator needs to be in constant renewal, updating his

knowledge (Kumar Basak et al., 2018).

To guide the scope of the game, we considered

the Brazilian context, which deﬁnes the environmen-

tal education must be worked on at all levels of educa-

tion in an interdisciplinary and transversal way. This

is a standard practice in many countries, as France,

USA, Germany, among others (Ardoin and Bowers,

2020).

Even though EE is not inserted as a subject in

the school curriculum, it must be approached by the

educator in an interdisciplinary way. In Brazil, the

Common National Curriculum Base (BNCC) is a

document that deﬁnes a set of guidelines to estab-

lish, throughout the stages of basic education, which

skills students should develop in their learning, within

which the application proposed here ﬁts in the area of

Natural Sciences of Elementary School. In Table 2,

the general competences are described:

In the next section, the methodology used for the

development and the tools and resources used for the

development of the game will be presented.

3.2 Modeling and Design

For the development of the game, the Construct 3

game engine was used. For the development of the

game outline, diagrams were ﬁrst structured contain-

ing the actions and objectives that the player must

carry out during the game, based on the natural sci-

ence skills of the early years of elementary school.

https://www.construct.net/en

Gamifying Environmental Education: A Primary School Perspective Through a Serious Game

353

Table 2: Examples of basic education skills related to EE, deﬁned in the BNCC.

Elementary School Natural Sciences

Competency 3 To analyse, understand and explain characteristics,

phenomena and processes related to the natural, social and technological world (including the

digital one), as well as the relationships established between them, exercising curiosity to ask

questions, seek answers and create solutions (including technological ones) based on the

knowledge of the Natural Sciences.

Competency 6 Use different languages and digital information and

communication technologies to communicate, access and disseminate information, produce

knowledge and solve problems in the Natural Sciences in a critical, meaningful,

reﬂective and ethical way.

Competency 8 Act personally and collectively with respect, autonomy,

responsibility, ﬂexibility, resilience and determination, resorting to the knowledge of the

Natural Sciences to make decisions regarding scientiﬁc-technological and socio-environmental

issues and regarding individual and collective health, based on ethical principles, democratic,

sustainable and supportive.

The game was designed to create an interactive

experience, with simple concepts, based on planting

actions with a focus on environmental education. The

support material guides the user in the dynamics of

the act of playing, being built with the same theme of

colors and styles used in the game, in the next sec-

tions the development of the game will be speciﬁcally

addressed.

For the development of the game’s music and

graphics, the choice was to use online repositories

such as itch.io where it is possible to ﬁnd free and paid

game asets packages, for the game some paid pack-

ages created by Studio ClockWork Raven and Vexed

were used , having a license to use it for commercial

purposes or not, and possible modiﬁcations, the cred-

its for the game asets used are in the application menu

When choosing the game’s background music,

it was used by the artist Dieter Van Der Vesten,

called Paris Gipsy Swing, the artist attributed to it the

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Inter-

national license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), thus can be

used within the game without modiﬁcations and giv-

ing due credit for it, the base game sounds were re-

moved and modiﬁed from free repositories that do not

have copyright. Table 3 summarizes the tools and re-

sources used in the game development.

The choice of genre was simulator, thus allowing

the player to be inserted within the environment, the

view of choice was the ﬁrst person with aerial view

using 2D elements in Pixel Art style, in which the

player must through his actions take care of planting,

so when the player uses only 1 species (monoculture)

the scoring system received is lower, while when us-

ing more species the score is exponentially increased.

In Figures 1 and 2, the initial menu and initial screen

are presented, executed in a cell phone with Android

system.

The start of the game is on the game’s menu

screen, which contains the start option, entering the

list of commands, ranking, credits, and the exit but-

ton, the layout starts in landscape for better use of the

display. device. When starting the layout, the back-

ground music starts playing, and all the buttons have

sound and stand out when touched, so the player re-

ceives sound and visual feedback of their actions.

The ranking system is done through data sent

within the game to Google’s ﬁrebase tool, using its

database function, where through the game code, in-

formation is ﬁltered and displayed in the ranking. As

a future implementation, the possibility of logging in

with social networks to share this ranking will be in-

serted, in the sequence the way the ranking works will

be better detailed.

When starting the game, the layout is modiﬁed,

a new interface appears in which the player must in-

teract with his plantation, new buttons and mechan-

ics are implemented and will be described separately

throughout the text, the layout as well as the pre-

vious one is started in landscape mode, and cannot

be changed to portrait, so it does not depend on the

phone’s orientation settings; when starting the layout

the background music continues to play, but it can be

deactivated in the internal menu; all the buttons have

sound and stand out when touched, as well as the in-

teractions with the planting system that will be de-

tailed in another section. The choice of colors, letters

and formats for the menus was made in order to be

clear and playful.

The menu button, located at the top left of the

screen, opens a window with the function of return-

ing to the initial screen, opening the command win-

dow, turning on or off sounds and effects, and has a

ﬁeld to type the user’s name and send your score. The

score is based on the sustainability points, which will

be explained in the text segment on the planting part.

The backpack and store button are fundamen-

tal for the player’s actions, in the store through the

game’s currency, called money, it is possible to pur-

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

354

Table 3: Resources used in the game development.

Resource Name Resource Type Resource Reference

Paint.net Image Editor https://www.getpaint.net/

Give Your Fonts Mono Font Editor https://www.construct.net/en/forum/game-development/tools-and-resources-27/sprite-font-generator-v3-64038

Construct 3 Game engine https://www.construct.net/

Dieter Van Der Vesten Repository https://freemusicarchive.org/music/dieter-van-der-westen/

ClockWorl Raven Studios Repository https://clockworkraven.itch.io/

Vexed Repository https://v3x3d.itch.io/

Firebase Database https://ﬁrebase.google.com/

Figure 1: First screen of the game – the user can select one of the elements to enter in a speciﬁc game phase.

Figure 2: Game menu.

chase 6 different types of seeds, pumpkin, beet, grape,

carrot, cabbage and cherry; when buying, the money

referring to the species is subtracted from the money

scoreboard, a buy sound signal is still emitted, as well

as a coin effect is generated on the buy button; all

seeds have a speciﬁc growth time, through the back-

pack button, the player can select and see the amount

of stock of a given seed purchased by the store and

thus carry out the planting.

The order of actions needed to carry out the plant-

ing (Figure 4) starts with the prepare button, it intro-

duces plowed land on the game screen, there are 4

beds with 11 spaces for planting in each of them, then

the watering button, transforms the plowed land into

wet land, with this it is possible to select the seeds in

the backpack to start planting, the game starts with 3

seeds of each type.

After the seeds grow, with the harvest button, it is

possible to harvest the plants and receive a reward in

coins (game money) in addition, an effect of coins is

generated on the harvested plant, and in sustainability

points (ranking points).

After carrying out the harvest, the wet land in

which the seed was, turns into plowed land, being

necessary to water it for the new planting; it is also

possible to remove plowed land, wet land, or wet land

Gamifying Environmental Education: A Primary School Perspective Through a Serious Game

355

Figure 3: Bee boxes in the game. The use of pesticides minimize the presence of bees, reducing the player’s points.

Figure 4: The plantation interface – the player must choose actions to maintain his plantation that are reverted into sustainable

points or decreased money.

with seed, using the remove button, but the seed will

be lost and the player will not receive any reward.

For the prepare, water and remove commands it is

possible with a click on the screen, or dragging with

the ﬁnger, while for the harvest one click, and for the

planting it is two clicks, this difference serves to avoid

possible errors within the game that can thwart the

player experience. The game allows the use of pesti-

cides, but it decreases the sustainability points and re-

duces the occurrence of bees (Figure 4), which, when

present, increase the player’s score even more.

In the upper left corner, a sun was added, which

has constant animation of the sun’s rays, has ﬁve ex-

pressions based on satisfaction regarding planting, the

more different seeds the player plants at the same

time, the better the sun’s reaction will be. The sun

has the animations detailed in Table 4.

With this visual feedback, the player notices the

difference in the way he cultivates his plantation and

feels motivated to maintain a plantation with a greater

diversity of species. Another important factor that

contributes to the player’s tendency to make a diver-

siﬁed plantation is the sustainability score that grows

passively and actively during the plantation.

To receive the passive score, the player just needs

to plant different species, the value constantly rises

every second, as each species generates an identical

ﬁxed value, this value is cumulative, so if the player

plants the six species at the same time, the passive

value is six times greater than with just planting one

species. Active value is received when harvesting a

plant, during harvesting the player will also receive a

cash value, the amount received is twice the cost of

the seed in the store.

4 EVALUATION

This section present the evaluation process of the pro-

totyped game. To evaluate the prototype made, we

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356

Table 4: Sun reactions in the game.

Reactions Animations Criteria

Default No species planted

Sad 1 species planted

Normal 2 different species planted

Happy 3 / 4 different species planted

In Love 5 / 6 different species planted

used MEEGA+ evaluation methodology (von Wan-

genheim et al., 2020). The choose of MEEGA+ was

made because is a well documented and abroad ap-

plied methodology.

The game ”Fazenda Sustent

avel” was published

in Google Play Store and distributed to a set of edu-

cators. The evaluation was carried out with 71 partic-

ipants, wich are in the following proﬁle: Educators,

from public institutions, with experience of applying

game-based learning techniques.

From public institutions with experience in ap-

plying game-based learning techniques, Figure 5

presents the results of the evaluation considering

the questionnaire deﬁned in MEEGA+ related to the

game’s usability, and Figure 6 shows the evaluation

results related to player experience. We also made a

qualitative analysis in the comments on the evalua-

tion. Here we are presenting three positive analysis of

the game (free translation from Portuguese):

• I really liked the design of the game. This retro

vibe is also very interesting. It reminds me a lot of

games like Harvest Moon, which I liked a lot. It

also has an Animal Crossing vibe but with a very

focused look at the environmental issue, which I

ﬁnd very interesting to be worked with all audi-

ences, but mainly with younger people from basic

education. I believe it is a very valid strategy to

work on environmental education and some prac-

tices that can be developed in a domestic environ-

ment. And I think it can be very well used while

spending time too.

• Graphics are very cute and even detailed and

seem to be much more ﬁlled with goals to accom-

plish. You not only have to take care of the farm

but also care about the environment by planting

trees near the river, something that until now has

not been seen in a crafting game since it was never

the focus.

• At ﬁrst, I liked the game to be in the pixel style be-

cause I really like games like that. The approach

to the environmental theme I also found interest-

ing because it is an ideal model of a farm that

tries to generate the least possible amount of en-

vironmental damage and bring a message behind

it. The diverse elements like cattle, bees, trees,

etc., also made me like the game.

Figure 5 presents the results of the evaluation con-

sidering the questionnary deﬁned in MEEGA+ related

to game’s usability, and Figure 6 shows the evaluation

results related to player experience.

We also analyzed a set of suggestions to improve

the game (freely translated from Portuguese):

• I think the game can improve on several factors,

including: Improve the farm by providing mouse-

dragging mechanics for planting and harvesting;

• Improve the composting part that needs to be bet-

ter explained how it works;

• Assign a story with characters;

• Make the game playable vertically on mobile de-

vices;

Gamifying Environmental Education: A Primary School Perspective Through a Serious Game

357

Figure 5: Evaluation of game usability.

• Improve missions, assigning easier missions and

making them more difﬁcult as you progress

through the gameplay;

• Improve the function of pesticides and plant en-

hancers so that they have a greater impact on

gameplay;

• Assign new plants with the highest cost providing

a more comfortable development.

The analysis of the results in the evaluation pro-

cess shows that the game had a general good evalua-

tion related to the usability.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Environmental education has support from the legis-

lature for its implementation in many countries, as for

example in Brazil, but in many cases not materials or

activities that generate students’ interest in the sub-

ject, which is why the importance of developing envi-

ronmental education games tends to help formal ed-

ucators and informal games, given this scenario, the

purpose of the article is to address the development of

a game on this theme.

The games analyzed in this work served as a ba-

sis for the development of the sustainable farm game,

the application of educational games focused on envi-

ronmental education contextualized to a possible re-

ality encourage players to assimilate information and

content through their actions, thus creating a greater

interest in the environmental theme.

During the testing phase, acceptance of the game

was high, however, game development can be a little

complex as the game project grows, both for technical

development and ﬁnancial issues, as future research

intends to expand the game to increase activities and

game modes.

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358

Figure 6: Evaluation of player experience.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is supported by CNPq/MCTI/FNDCT

n. 18/2021 - UNIVERSAL grant n. 405973/2021-

7. The research by Vin

ıcius Maran is supported by

CNPq grant 306356/2020-1 (DT-2).

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