How it started

In my first year at CIIT College of Arts and Technology, I was nudged by my friend to join a team of 4 that will represent the school for the Xylem Innovation Challenge of 2021. It is a hackathon with the goal of making an innovation that would help address water conservation.

As game developers, we originally decided to develop a game. I created a whole document pitch for a gameplay. It is basically like secret killer where you have to find out the killer as they try to eliminate players one by one. Inspired by the story of Narcissus, the twist is that only the killer's character would reflect on liquids, so the killer must avoid them and try to win the game.

The Birth of Bakunawa

We then decided that while the game idea kind of revolves around water, it was also kind of long reach and that it won't really have that much of an impact with addressing water conservation.

Our final decision was to create some sort of app that gamifies EarthEcho International's MonitorWater system, (https://www.monitorwater.org/) where they have a database of all water bodies people can register/update water properties such as turbidity, temperature, flora and fauna ecosystem, etc.

The idea has a touch of Pokemon Go, where you have a virtual map on your phone and you set locations of nearby water bodies or update its current condition through various properties such as turbidity, temperature, cleanliness, level. More properties can be gathered and set through water test kits that can be bought online.

I don't even remember how I came up or what inspired me to revolve around the Bakunawa theme. Nevertheless, below was parts of the final game documentation I wrote.

Development

We have a very great programmer on our team, Paolo Tolentino. He managed almost all of the codes and infrastructures, from front end to backend, the servers and everything else. I do not know much about team-based development environment, or even just dev environments in general. I always say that this experience was a paradigm shift for me and set my expectations as I start my com-sci journey even just as a first year.

With that said, I committed on other things not related to code, such as documentation, presentation, overall theme, and collaterals. By collaterals I mean the snapshots, in-app assets such as animations, and other aesthetics. At some point I was also tasked to implement the front-end design from Figma, which was designed by Jommel Molina, so I had some experience with Flutter in this project.

Game Documentation

Game Synopsis

Bakunawa is a Volunteering Game, which is essentially a gamified VCS (Virtual Citizen Science) that refashions EarthEcho’s MonitorWater submission system in a much more interactable and immersive experience using GPS.

The game aspires to innovate the way people submit entries on MonitorWater, given that the developers tackled and agreed on two problems found on the website’s submission system- (1) it is very technical in that select skills are required to navigate which buttons are to be pressed; and (2) it is somewhat tedious and boring. While these are not serious problems, these are what the developers thought that need improvement. The current submission system is much more favorable to technical people such as scientists, volunteers, and so the developers envisioned MonitorWater to be favorable to anyone with no constraints, such as elementary students and poorly educated people.

The goal of Bakunawa is to create a game revolving on the publicly available MonitorWater datasets. The developers acknowledge the importance of EarthEcho’s vision to raise awareness and urge people to be involved in protecting water resources around the world. The game would help bring more audience to the table, specifically by engaging the different motivations of a player and integrating those through gameplay mechanics. This in return would expand MonitorWater’s datasets on a much rapid pace.

Genre and Explanation

Mobile Game | Location Based | Volunteering Game – The game utilizes Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies to simulate players’ location onto a virtual copy of the world. Bakunawa is a VCS tool that utilizes crowdsourcing to gather large datasets combined with game mechanics.

Lore

There once was a story of a supreme being capable of spontaneous creation. Ancient people from the Philippines called the being as Bathala. Filipinos believed that Bathala conjured seven moons to illuminate the dark skies.

Mankind rejoiced as the once gloomy nights became seemingly as bright as the days, eliminating all their fears away. Everyone became mesmerized with the moons, but one particular entity became more interested than anyone or anything.

The Bakunawa, a giant sea serpent with a mouth the size of a lake, large gills and whiskers, ruled the oceans. Amazed by the beauty of the moons, the dragon would rise from the ocean and swallow the moons whole, one by one. Each moon would illuminate inside the dragon’s throat, casting a horrifying shadow, until every moon was consumed but one. This was believed to be the cause of eclipses.

To keep the Bakunawa from devouring the last moon, ancient Filipinos would bang pots and pans to create a noise loud enough to scare the Bakunawa. However, older folks believe that to completely suppress the water serpent, a river spirit must be placed on every possible gateway of the serpent- any form of water body. Unfortunately, no one knows how or where a river spirit can be found, or if it even exists...

Game Mechanics/Features

Players are given points by submitting site properties such as pH level, temperature, etc. Highest points are given if all fields are filled but diminishes if the same player attempts to submit on the same site consecutive number of times. The longer the site was not updated by anyone, the higher the points.

Players may choose to submit only qualitative data, but it would yield less points. To get more points, the game recommends submitting quantitative data by using water testing kits. These kits may be acquired directly through EarthEcho or on any local facilities that can offer.

Occasionally, whenever players make a successful submission, they have a chance to acquire loot boxes which contain ‘river spirits’.

Location

On first launch, the app will request permission to grab the user’s location. Depending on the user’s android version, they may also be given an option to allow permission only once. This will prompt the request every time the user opens the application. If the request is denied, the application will not run.

The application requires permission to use location to accurately identify the player’s longitude and latitude within the map. Only nearby sites would be automatically displayed on your map to minimize resource use.

Progression and Leaderboards

Every submission yields player points depending on the number and type of fields that were filled. Gaining points increases your experience bar, allowing you to level up. As players

level up and gain more points, they climb higher and higher through the leaderboard. The current player with the highest level is hailed as the top player.

Players also gain badges whenever they achieve milestones such as completing certain quantities of submission, travelling a certain number of distance, and much more.

Collectibles

After a successful creation or update of water sites, users may acquire loot boxes that can be opened to gain collectibles called as ‘River Spirits’. These spirits differ in styles and variations according to their rarity and categories. Alongside being for collectives and aesthetics, these spirits also acts as a point multiplier which increases the amount of points that you gain for every submission. The higher the number of spirits you have in your inventory, the more points you can gain.

Pointing System

Points are given to the players for every submission fields that are filled. Fields labeled as default-by-app-first will attempt to grab data from the application first, giving no points. These are grouped into three: Participant and Site Information, Qualitative (Utah Field Observation Questionnaire), and Quantitative. In general, quantitative data offers the greatest points since the require special tools to acquire data.

Participant and Site Information

• School, organization, or group name
• Number of participants
• Date and time of monitoring
• Did you follow standard Quality Assurance Protocols when monitoring?
• Site Name (New Site Points)
• Site Description (Update Points)
• Country
• Latitude
• Longitude
• Waterbody Name
• Surface Water Type

Utah Field Observation Questionnaire

• Which description best fits how is the water flowing?
• What is your visual observation of what is on the surface of water?
• What is the best description of water clarity?
• What is the best color to describe the body of water?
• Pick from the list of words the best description for the smell of the body of water
• Look upstream and downstream (within 10m) of the sampling location and record what category best describes the dominant condition of algae in the stream.
• Look around the immediate sampling location (within 10m) and count the number of dead fish floating or below the surface.
• Choose the one category that best represents the weather while you sampled

Test Kit Questionnaire

• Recent precipitation date at site
• Air temperature
• Other observations
• Turbidity
• Water temperature
• pH level
• Dissolved oxygen
• Dissolved Oxygen Saturation
• Salinity
• Nitrate
• Nitrite
• Phosphate

A player can gain a maximum of 169 points if the player is registering a new site and has filled all fields including default-by-app-first fields not automatically generated by the app.

To prevent players from farming points by submitting consecutively on the same site, a diminishing formula directly proportional to the time of last submission is calculated. This means that the lower the time duration since last submission, the lower the total points given, and the higher (longer) the time duration since last submission, the higher the points.

Specifically, the formula log2(n/30.4375) is used, where n>= 30.4375 and n is number of days elapsed since the site is last updated by ANY player. 30.4375 is derived from 365.25/12 (a close estimate of a month value).

App Usage Foundation

I idealized the foundation for how users might/should use the application. I name 5 steps: Observation, Collection, Submission, Progression, and Dedication.

First, observation. Users/players would explore and observe bodies of water around them, their state, the ecosystem around it, etc. They then collect samples and test them, determine the current properties of water. After tabulating information, they submit their data and get points (and stickers if they're lucky). Progression means climbing up the global leaderboard, showing their dedication to the game, and also to helping water conservation through testing and updating statistics.

Snapshots and Collaterals

Sticker Lootbox Animation

Below is an animation that shows when you create a submission. It serves as a loading animation for unlocking stickers. The animation was made using Adobe After Effects and was later converted to a Lottie animation via a plugin. The Lottie conversion was necessary for us to embed the animation into Flutter as SVG rather than a video, preventing quality loss.

Achievement Badges

Badges I made using Adobe Illustrator, acquired by users for different achievements such as having their first submission, their 5th, or being on a specific place within the leaderboard.