Let’s Build a City: A Sustainable City Building Clicker Game

This paper describes the design, development, and testing of Let's Build a City, a sustainable city-building clicker game for college students required to take courses in natural sciences as part of their core curriculum. It is meant as a teaching module on how excessively aggressive building, expansion, and consumption of resources leads to the overall downfall of the city and surrounding area. The game leads the player into depleting the natural environment for the sake of points, showcasing how easy it is to tunnel-vision into chasing progress and the irreparable damage doing so could cause. During the post-game processing with the testers, feedback was highly positive in terms of gameplay and delivering the intended message.