Wildfire Minigames Collection

Devlog

• Wildfire Games Facilitator's Guide
  August 18, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#facilitation, #play together, #learning

  The Wildfire Minigames Collection is a series of games focused on different aspects of wildfire preparedness, mitigation, and resilience. The games were designed to be played in a facilitated or hoste... Continue reading

  
• Balancing and Tuning Social Simulation
  August 06, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#social simulation, #narrative, #storytelling, #game design, #bugs

  We wanted the social aspect of the game to be simulated in a way to reflect the narrative choices players made while also realistically showcasing the challenges that occur during an active evacuation... Continue reading

  
• A Research Lab That Works Like an Indie Studio
  July 26, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#education, #learn game dev, #university

  You might expect a game about wildfire resilience to come from a government agency or a commercial studio. But ours came out of a university research lab, with a bit of a twist. We’re based at the S... Continue reading

  
• Measuring Impact: How We Think About Learning and Behavior Change in Wildfire Games
  July 22, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#resilience, #wildfire, #climate, #games for impact, #serious games, #measurement, #success metrics

  When designing games for impact, especially for climate resilience, success isn’t just about engagement or polish. It’s about what players take away , and whether it helps them make better decisio... Continue reading

  
• Taking It to the People – Community Playtesting and Sharing Our Wildfire Games
  July 14, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#events, #community, #playtesting

  One of the most exciting phases of our wildfire game project has been taking the work out into the world —not just for playtesting, but for real dialogue, feedback, and connection. Designing with co... Continue reading

  
• Finding Your Community
  July 08, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#community, #wildfire, #resilience, #design, #co-design, #playtest

  Designing a game about a serious, real-world topic—like wildfire resilience—requires an extra step beyond doing research: working with the people who live through it. We’ve been fortunate to col... Continue reading

  
• Launching a Game for Impact: The Challenges without a Marketing Budget
  July 07, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#promoting, #marketing, #local news, #games for impact

  Serious Games and Games for Impact often have limited funds for development, and even less funding available to cover the cost of marketing. This has been no different for our case: while we are fortu... Continue reading

  
• The Benefits of Multiplayer, and How to Keep it in Scope
  July 06, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#multiplayer, #coop, #collaborative, #split screen, #pass-and-play

  As mentioned in Multiplayer, Cooperation, and Discussion , we noticed early on during prototyping the players seemed more invested and more curious in the multiplayer experiences. Players also seemed... Continue reading

  
• Approaching User Experience: Crafting an Interactive and Immersive UI
  July 06, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC

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  #learning, #ui, #ux, #user interface, #figma, #unity

  In designing the user interface for our mini-games, we aimed to do more than simply guide players through the experience. We wanted to create an immersive environment where UI elements enhanced gamepl... Continue reading

  
• Implementation: Simulating Dual-Lane Evacuation Traffic
  July 05, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#c#, #code, #traffic, #navmesh, #pathfinding, #ai

  One thing we heard again and again while exploring wildfire evacuation stories was how challenging evacuations become, especially when residents are trying to take two cars to save more belongings or... Continue reading

  
• Art Direction: Why We Chose a Stylized, Low-Poly Look for Our Wildfire Games
  July 04, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#art direction, #low-poly, #stylized, #animated

  When people think of serious games, they often imagine something dry or overly realistic. But for our wildfire resilience games, we chose an art style that’s colorful, simple, and low-poly—and tha... Continue reading

  
• Tech Discussion: Simulating Fire That Feels Real
  July 04, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC

  In Firesafe Friend , fire isn’t just a visual effect—it’s a core gameplay system . It simulates how fire behaves across different house parts and materials, and teaches players how critical fire... Continue reading

  
• From Workshop to Production – Turning Community Stories into Playable Scenarios
  July 03, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC

  One of the most powerful parts of our design process is the moment when stories—shared in community workshops or expert interviews—turn into playable, interactive moments in the game. A recurring... Continue reading

  
• Critical Interdisciplinarity
  July 02, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#science, #engineering, #simulation, #modeling, #traffic, #interdisciplinary, #social science, #communication, #network, #serious game, #sme

  A critical component to our success has been the fully integrated multidisciplinary team involved in this project. While many serious games consult Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), it is less common for... Continue reading

  
• When Good Ideas Go—Iterating with Communities and Experts
  July 01, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#playtesting, #revisions, #iterative design, #experts, #community

  Playtesting is where game design meets reality. In our wildfire resilience games, it’s not just about fixing bugs or tweaking difficulty—it’s about listening . We’ve built our games alongside... Continue reading

  
• Concept Chunking: a Minigames Approach to Tackle Complex Topics in Game Design
  July 01, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#narrative, #minigames, #complexity, #simulation, #wildfire, #serious game

  A major challenge with games for impact is the exceeding complex nature of the challenges being addressed. Our topic is no different -- wildfire poses many unique challenges in different circumstances... Continue reading

  
• Building Empathy Through Storytelling and Role-Play
  June 30, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#community, #preparations, #wildfire, #narrative, #dialog, #empathy, #emotion

  When designing our wildfire resilience games, using realistic information is important, but we don’t just focus on facts. At the heart of our games are stories: families making hard choices, neighbo... Continue reading

  
• Multiplayer, Cooperation, and Discussion
  June 29, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#multiplayer, #cooperation, #communication, #collaboration, #prototype

  During our first prototypes we experimented with both single player and multiplayer versions, and what we found was with the multiplayer version, we immediately had a lot more investment from people,... Continue reading

  
• Autonomy and Agency vs Gamification
  June 29, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#simulation, #agency, #autonomy, #narrative

  In gamification and serious games, there is often and underlying motive of nudging the player towards a desired action or choice. Through multiple rounds of playtesting, we found that players were mor... Continue reading

  
• The "Serious" Side of Serious Games: Staying True to Life
  June 28, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#wildfire, #design, #serious game, #data driven

  When we set out to design a game about wildfire resilience, our core design team knew very little about wildfire. This is common on serious game teams, and is usually mitigated by consulting with subj... Continue reading

  
• Reflections on Co-Design
  June 26, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC

  As game developers, we are all familiar with the importance of playtesting our products on potential end-users, but is there a place for them earlier in the process? Unlike more traditional game devel... Continue reading

  
• Developing Games for Climate Resilience
  June 19, 2025 by Wildfire UCSC#research, #wildfire, #climate change, #resilience

  Our game is part of ongoing research about how we can design games for climate and natural hazard resilience. We do community co-design with residents and experts to ensure our games reflect the lived... Continue reading