Chef Adventure
Winner of the Best Applied Game 2021 at the Italian Video Games Award, Chef Adventure is a narrative educational game developed for UniCoop’s conscious citizenship workshops for secondary schools.
The game was created starting from scratch and released after 5 months as a digital game on mobile iOS and Android.
Throughout the game journey, the player will explore themes like ambition, wealth, consumption, responsibility, and solidarity and will be nudged to reflect on their role in the community as individuals and citizens.
The Challenge
The main challenge of the project was to be able to push the children in the workshops to reflect on and discuss topics that were not interesting to them.
Compared to the workshops carried out in previous years, based on the screening of videos with interviews and insights into projects carried out by Coop, the aim was to obtain a more authentic involvement and be able to build awareness of the many different themes linked to educational paths (supply chain and consumption, sustainability, and biodiversity, legality and inclusion. art and communication).
There were many topics and there was a need for a common thread and a language capable of capturing attention first and interest second.
Our Solution
We chose to build a narrative game with branching narratives and multiple endings with a compelling story and interesting characters covering different topics and perspectives.
Completely abandoning the ex-cathedra approach, the players are simply asked to download the game on their phone and play an adventure, lasting approximately 60-90 minutes, at their convenience at home. After some weeks they would have met again and talked about their gaming experience.
The game created is fresh and pleasant. Narrative aesthetics introduce mystery and the desire to discover the evolution of characters’ relations and the outcome of the hero’s journey of the main character.
As they connect with characters and places, players are challenged to express personal opinions about all the different topics, with the freedom to choose how much to go in depth. They are also brought face to face with the consequences of the perspectives expressed through the events in-game and the evolution of the main character’s vision about self and life.
The result is not only to create interest in the topic: interactive storytelling enriches and holds the player accountable, reminding them that what they do, and what they don’t do, always has a consequence.
This form of narrative was revealed to be highly engaging and eventually empowering for the players involved and opened for the client a more successful strategy to run educational projects in the youth target.
Impact
Thanks to Chef Adventure, UniCoop was able to improve the impact of its educational projects and obtain much more visibility than with previous CSR projects.
The newsworthiness of the project certainly benefited from the consequences of the game winning the Best Applied Game IVGA award whose jury declared
“UniCoop Firenze Conscious Citizenship project aimed at secondary school girls and boys, manages to naturally place narrative and mechanics at the service of its objectives, in a remarkable and unexpected balance between message and entertainment. The greatest merit of Chef Adventure is precisely that of knowing how to decline the applied game in a playful way that is never forced or didactic”.
After the prize, important newspapers, including Il sole 24 Ore, talked about the project and the commitment of the client to ESG.
Gameplay
“Chef Adventure” is a narrative game in which the player takes on the role of a young chef who, in search of fortune, travels along a dreamy countryside road. Pushing forward a whimsical cart, the protagonist traverses picturesque landscapes, at times mystical, and encounters both real and surreal characters with whom they engage in conversations about individual and collective well-being.
The theme of well-being is presented primarily as a balance between desire and responsibility, which implies attention and respect for oneself, others, and the environment. Through dialogue, the protagonist can improve their serenity and self-esteem and find inspiration for new recipes. However, to do so, they must understand the needs and different perspectives of their temporary travel companions. Similarly, the player must reckon with the protagonist’s emotional sphere, avoiding choices that contradict their values and providing them with material and opportunities for their creative epiphanies.
About Chef Adventure
Tommaso Perrulli
School and social projects manager – Unicoop Firenze
The work of Whitesock on the Prosperia, Chef Adventure and Simbioasi projects has been very important because it has allowed us to successfully use the language of gaming in schools. Whitesock has been able to interpret the briefing and transform our content into original and engaging games that successfully explain value-based content, encouraging children to make conscious choices from a young age. Whitesock has proven to be a reliable and competent partner in creating effective, inclusive educational projects with a significant media impact.
