Eden Marine High students develop, build and code a computer game for disaster preparedness

Using simple keyboard commands, players follow the journey of a native possum as it jumps up through what appear to be rafters of a house to escape a fire, with its goal to reach and guide people towards an evacuation zone.

Upon accidentally falling, messages of preparedness advice are given.

Launched on Tuesday, August 29, the game helped teach 11 school students, between Years 7 and 10, in how to prepare, become more aware, and reduce the risk from disasters, while simultaneously building digital literacy skills.

Carol Ahern, the acting coordinator of Eden Community Access Centre's (ECAC) Disaster Preparedness, Reducing the Risk Youth-led Projects, said the project was designed for the students.

"A series of six youth group sessions [were run] at the high school and from that information, [ECAC] concluded that students didn't have a lot of knowledge about disaster preparedness, how to be prepared, [and] how to manage in a disaster situation," Ms Ahern said.

Students Padd and Cayden helped to create the storyboards, and said the help from outside professionals allowed them to further understand what elements were required to tell the best story.

"We wrote up the story and basically what the levels should look like, trees and fire, and then we would write down the assets, then give those assets to the creative team [who] would draw it up, and they'd give it to the coding team to put in the game," Cayden said.

One of the students, Grayson, who was part of the creative team, helped to make visual assets from trees to firetrucks, buildings to flames, and characters using a program called Piskel, which creates art using individual pixels.

"The first level there's no fire, you're just collecting lots of stuff, second level there is a fire, and the third level you [take] the firetruck and you go to the evacuation centre," Grayson said.

Another student, Beau, helped to create the audio within the game using natural elements and creative techniques, all recorded used a laptop and the microphone from headphones.

"We also went around to different places around the school and we recorded the different sounds of water, some of birds, and scrunched up plastic for the fire," Beau said.

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Elizabeth, Grace, and Teagan said they used the plastic inserts of binders to create the crackling noise of the fire mixed with white noise to help capture the sounds of a roaring fire.

Deputy principal Bradley Milner said the students had done really well, and all picked something up from the project.

"All of them have learnt from scratch along the way, all their design skills, they've learnt the music skills [and] recorded sounds, the coding," Mr Milner said.

"I think all of them picked something up."

The project was supported by FRRR Heywire and Reconstruction NSW for funding, Bega Innovation Hub, chairperson Peter Skelton of ECAC board, Will Sharples from Eden Game Development Centre, University of Wollongong for mentorship, Rural Fire Service, and Jacqui from Campbell Page for mentorship.

To download and play the game, click here

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