Cene, an alternate reality game, was developed as a three-week climate change module for middle school environmental science curricula and was piloted in three schools in Chicago. In February and March of 2022, over 350 middle school students at Bret Harte Elementary, UChicago Woodlawn Charter, and the Laboratory Schools completed over 2,500 team-based quests that created opportunities for applied STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) knowledge. Via challenges conveyed through live streaming, websites, and in-person interactions, student-players engaged in a narrative, meeting the Keepers: curators of the Possibility Space, a multiverse that contains countless possible future Earths. The Keepers identified a potential threat called the Darkness, a cosmic-level natural disaster that threatened to destroy all possible futures. With the help of the Fourcast Lab, players encountered twelve possible futures of climate change and helped to fight off the Darkness. The worlds they explored included dystopian, utopian, and weird futures. Along the way, they held off a villainous group known as the Veilers. This game used techniques from the arts, humanities, and design in order to teach transferable skills (e.g., organization, teamwork, collaboration, and creativity) and knowledge (e.g., information about climate change and the scientific method). Students also used speculative design techniques to imagine better futures and pathways to reach them.

An article overview of the game with images published by UChicago News.

A trailer and a short documentary about the Cene game.