ReLife the Game

ReLife is a first-person 3D game where the player works as an agent for POCITYF, a real sustainability initiative, with the goal of making the city of Alkmaar greener.

The game was built as a group project for a real client: the Municipality of Alkmaar. They wanted a game that raised awareness of sustainability and showed how Alkmaar was working toward becoming a Green city, a European model for sustainable urban development. The result is a full game with a progression system, multiple game modes, and randomly generated missions, and support for up to five players.

The game takes place across the real districts of Alkmaar. Each district has its own sustainability level, and raising it contributes to the overall sustainability of the whole city. The player explores the district, finds randomly placed tasks, and completes minigames to bring the sustainability percentage up.

The game can be played solo or with up to four other players cooperating on the same map. The lobby is a 3D agent's office where players can view the Alkmaar map, check their stats, and select which district to tackle next.

Progression works through two systems running in parallel. Sustainability points track how green Alkmaar is becoming, with the game considered complete when the whole city hits 100%. The system is designed for around 15 hours of playtime on average.

Reputation is the player level, earned through missions. As the player levels up, they unlock new equipment: running boots at level 2, a vacuum at level 3, and X-Ray Goggles at level 4. All equipment is visible from the start so players always know what they're working toward.

At the end of each mission, an End of Day report shows performance stats including distance travelled and most successful minigame.

Every mission generates a random set of three tasks from the available pool. Tasks are randomly placed across the map to encourage exploration and make each run feel different. Different districts have different tasks: repairing a wind turbine makes sense in a rural area but not in the city centre.

Minigames were designed around three principles: they end quickly so they don't break the game's pacing, they're intuitive to pick up without explanation, and they use simple controls (at most four keys or a mouse click). Difficulty scales dynamically during a mission based on the current sustainability level, keeping the challenge consistent as the player progresses.

After completing each minigame, a popup shares a real sustainability fact related to what the player just did, like how solar street lights can be installed anywhere.