IIT Tirupati develops educational game 'SurviveCovid-19' to spread aware about Coronavrius

“The game is inspired by a simple pixel-based top-down style design where people navigate the city with safety and health measures and accomplish tasks such as buying groceries and medicines.”

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Tirupati develops educational game ‘SurviveCovid-19’ to for increasing awareness of health measures for COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus led to severe loss of life despite various public awareness programs about the deadly virus. There are many people who are not following the guidelines and health precautions issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the government.

In order to make people understand the prevailing emergency situation and the seriousness of the situations, a team at the Research in Intelligent Software & Human Analytics (RISHA) Lab of Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Tirupati, thought of developing educational games for COVID-19 awareness.

Dr Sridhar Chimalakonda, an Assistant Professor at IIT Tirupati, who led the team stated, “Given the relaxations that may follow after lifting lockdown, it is extremely important to make people aware of various safety precautions to stop the spread and the level of severity of the disease.”

SurviveCovid-19 helps people understand the importance of masks, sanitizers and social distancing to keep themselves and others safe from the contagious virus COVID-19 when they walk around the theme of a city.

Dr Chimalakonda further added, “The game is inspired by a simple pixel-based top-down style design where people navigate the city with safety and health measures and accomplish tasks such as buying groceries and medicines.”

In the game, the player is supposed to survive by performing set tasks and rules (safety measured against COVID-19). The game is played 80 times so far and is developed using a survivor style theme.  In the game, the player has to perform tasks like buying groceries, medicines while using sanitizers and wearing a mask to win. Life keeps reducing whenever the person comes in contact with another person, this will teach people about social distancing norms.

Developed by Dheeraj Vagavolu and supported by Akhila Sri Manasa Venigalla, students of RISHA Lab, IIT Tirupati, SurviveCovid-19 is available for everyone on the web platform- https://survivecovid-19.itch.io/game2020. People can play the 2D game on the web platform without installation and on Android mobile phones with the installation.

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