Our project, Power Island, is a game in which the player must manage a virtual Caribbean island with the goal of creating a sustainable energy system whilst balancing needs of the nation's population, economy, and environment. It intends to teach and raise awareness about energy issues in the Caribbean currently such as heavy reliance on fossil fuels, high energy costs, and vulnerability to climate change as well as to promote sustainable thinking by encouraging the player to think critically about energy consumption and generation and showing the importance of transitioning to renewable energy while balancing economic and environmental factors.
The project can be used in schools to educate the future generation about such themes, and potentially as training software for environmentalists. This concept is implemented through a top-down simulation strategy game with a variety of menus and metrics that the player has to manage.
The player starts with limited budget and infrastructure and must allocate resources to build energy facilities, improve energy efficiency, and educate the population on energy conservation. Additionally, the player must decide how much to invest in non-renewable energy (which is cheaper initially but detrimental in the long term) versus renewable energy (expensive upfront but sustainable.) Availability of resources specific to the Caribbean such as sunlight wind and geothermal potential are factored in.
There are also natural disasters which may damage infrastructure which tests the system's resilience, a pollution tracker which shows the impact of energy choices of the user on the island's environment and global climate, and other AI-controlled neighboring islands with unique characteristics (i.e. one specializes in wind, another in geothermal) which the player can trade energy resources with. The project is programmed in Python using the PyGame library, and artificial intelligence is used in the creation of the project for generative art assets and minor debugging.