Heat Mitigation is a turn-based strategy game within the Planet3 app. The player helps the citizens of Athens, Greece withstand rising temperatures by experimenting with different heat mitigation solutions.

• Release ........ April, 2024

• Studio .......... bully! entertainment

• My role ........ Contract Game Designer

• Platform ....... iPad

• Engine .......... Unity

• Team size ..... 30

• Wrote & maintained design documentation

• Designed & prototyped turn-based gameplay systems

• Designed & balanced game's economies

• Led team's playtest sessions

My primary goal with Heat Mitigation was to create an experience that was both educational and engaging in a way that encourages the player to think critically.

My biggest challenge was figuring out how to turn the science and costs of heat mitigation into gamified systems and mechanics that are easy to understand, as well as simplifying real-life data related to global warming into digestible content that fits into those frameworks. After learning more about heat mitigation tactics from experts at Arsht-Rock, I decided to design the experience as a strategy game:

Over multiple rounds of increasing heat, the player uses a budget to purchase and implement heat mitigation solutions across four distinct districts in the city of Athens. I created a formula to establish a district's heat resiliency "score", which takes into account the district's population, the round's temperature, and any heat mitigation solutions that were implemented there. The population and microclimate of each district determine what kinds of heat mitigation solutions are more/less effective, and encourage the player to read the provided information on the districts and solutions.

After rigorous playtesting and tweaking of game economies (including a regulating budget, the costs and levels of impact of various heat mitigation solutions, and ever-increasing temperatures that increase the game's difficulty), I was finally able to shape this interactive experience into one that is balanced and that requires strategy, while also teaching the player a thing or two about global warming.