Clynx created Ava the fox to help young people explore Mental Health, Sustainability, and Social Inclusion in a serious game format!
June 2023
The project "Play With Your Future", co-funded by the Erasmus+, Youth in Action program, is a project promoted by the Red Cross Youth that aims to raise awareness of the general objectives of the European Strategy for Youth (in particular, environmental sustainability, social inclusion and mental health), through the implementation of a non-formal education digital tool.
This project aims to create and implement an innovative non-formal education tool, which takes the format of a digital game and aims to raise awareness of the general objectives of the European Union (EU) Strategy for Youth, focusing on mental health and well-being.
The main bases of the digital game were thought and designed by several young people from Portugal, Estonia and Italy. Through the use of non-formal education activities and board games, topics related to gamification - the use of game methodologies and features to turn more complex content into more accessible material - were discussed, as well as the project themes.
Invited by the Red Cross and the Psychology Association of the University of Minho, Clynx took part in this project as a consultant and developer. They were undoubtedly some challenging and learning months, but also a lot of fun and we can even say that the results were quite positive.
But what did this Game consist of and what was the role of the Clynx Team in its development?
The PWYF project game is a serious 2D game, in pixel-art style, that promotes learning focused on 3 main themes, Mental Health, Social Inclusion and Environment. Each theme is represented by a map called a world, and each player with his or her avatar can explore it with the help of Ava the fox.
In each world the player is challenged to find specific objects, which give him access to cognitive mini-games about the theme of the world he is in. At the end of each map, the player is challenged to guess the gate code that gives access to the next world.
Play With Your Future is a consortium coordinated by the National Office of the Red Cross Youth, together with the Red Cross Youth from the Delegation of Braga, the Psychology Association of the University of Minho, Noored Ühiskonna Heaks (Estonian NGO) and Studio Progetto (Italian NGO), co-funded by the Erasmus+ Youth in Action Program of the European Commission, Key Action 2: Cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices.
See the testimonials of the entities that worked with Clynx throughout this project.👇🏼
Sérgio Urso
Studio Progetto Social Cooperative
“Studio Progetto Social Cooperative, since 2013, has worked with non-formal education in order to provide more inclusive and engaging learning processes for students and young people, especially those connected to European mobility. One of the tools that non-formal education frequently uses is gamification and game-based learning, in that sense, "Play with your future" has been a priceless opportunity to explore the digital dimension of game-based learning.
For our organization, game-based learning has been a chance to get closer to young people and contribute to raising awareness of three important topics: inclusion, sustainability, and mental well-being.
The collaboration with Clynx has provided evidence of the impact in terms of learning on the young people involved in the testing of the game, a comprehensive analysis of all the data collected will support the youth sector in proving how a positive change can be fostered also with non-formal approaches.”
Cátia Silva e Armanda Pereira
Associação de Psicologia, Universidade do Minho
"Play With Your Future" is a project that brought together several national and international partners to create and implement a non-formal education tool, which takes the format of a digital game.
This game was developed with the aim of raising young people's awareness about the general objectives of the European Union (EU) Strategy for Youth.
During this process, we had the opportunity to work in close collaboration with Clynx for the development of this tool. We see the path taken as marked by the richness of sharing and teamwork, based on an open and collaborative communication. From the beginning, we shared a common vision of creating something interactive and engaging for young people, with a complete narrative that would help them broaden their knowledge in these areas. The different meetings throughout the process were important to discuss the design, narrative and mechanics of the game, allowing for full alignment of goals. Clynx's previous experience in creating games and digital platforms was fundamental to the final result, and has contributed to the positive feedback we have received with the project participants."
Marcos Santos
Youth for Society
“Our organization Noored Uhiskonna Heaks (Youth for Society) main goal is to promote the learning transformation of young people under the slogan “What is good for young people is good for society”, therefore we working with serious games is a great way to introduce new attractive tools to promote the learning and the participation of young people in all spheres of life. Our main motivation was to have a practical and specific tool that at the same time is attractive to young people (such as a video game) but that still works in a second layer where the game itself raises awareness for the utmost important topics in our society nowadays.
Working with Clynx was a smooth experience as we had direct contact with their team and were aware of all the different roles to make the game and all the workshops feasible and interesting, while the feedback was always taken into consideration. We are happy that in the end, the game is now readily available and we can keep using this tool in our local and international programmes.”
This article was written by Ana Cortez.
Clynx Health supports Healthcare Providers and Physiotherapists scale their responsiveness and optimize the experience of their physiotherapy services.
