Happy’s Sailing Journey
Gamified knowledge transfer
Happy’s Sailing Journey is a story-based business simulation that interactively sensitizes players to sustainability, anti-piracy and technological developments in the field of printer accessories.
Players sail with Happy from island to island to help the inhabitants with their challenges. At the same time, they run a toner production facility where PET bottles and clothes hangers are fished out of the sea, recycled and turned into sustainable printer accessories.
The weekly interaction over six months promotes a sustainable learning process and motivates the players to actively engage with the content.
Client
Ecomedia AG
Contractor
Fiberjungle CORP (Fiberjungle AG)
Initial situation
Sustainability, resource conservation and the circular economy are key topics for the future – but how can customers be made aware of them? Especially in specialist retail, where the focus is on sales and efficiency, there is often little time for traditional training. Our client faced precisely this challenge: sustainable product solutions are available, but there was a lack of exciting and tangible communication that motivates customers to actively engage with these topics.
Our task: to sensitize specialist retail customers to sustainability, product protection and technological innovations in the field of printer accessories – especially toner – in a playful and interactive way and to promote a sustainable learning process.
Our solution
With Happy’s Sailing Journey, we have developed a story-based world of experience that conveys knowledge in a playful way and can be easily integrated into customers’ everyday lives.
Compact & suitable for everyday use: Only 5 – 10 minutes a week to set new impulses without disrupting the work flow.
Lasting learning effect: The six-month duration ensures that the learning content is anchored in the long term.
Interactive learning mechanisms: Players actively engage with the themes by overcoming challenges, managing resources and making strategic decisions.
High motivation: Innovative game mechanics, rewards and continuous progress ensure sustained engagement – learning becomes an experience.
Game concept
Players sail with Happy from island to island to help the inhabitants with their problems and find their cause. At the same time, they operate a toner production facility where the Galleon fishes PET bottles and clothes hangers out of the sea, recycles them and processes them into sustainable printer accessories.
Story-based knowledge transfer
Happy’s journey continues on a weekly basis, with sustainability, anti-piracy and the technological development of toners being explored in a variety of ways on 15 islands and the Galleon. Happy and the islanders bring the game world to life with animations and AI-generated voices.
Eco-Coin
The in-game currency Eco-Coin is essential for game progress and is earned by selling toner and solving tasks. It can be invested in island projects, machine upgrades and accessories.
Toner production
The players manage a toner production facility, which they can expand with additional machines, increase the production speed and configure the toner color. Production runs around the clock, even when the player is offline.
Collectable objects
PET bottles and clothes hangers can be collected in the environment to illustrate the circular economy of recycled toner. Other objects can also be collected, which appeals to the natural urge to collect and increases long-term motivation.
Quiz challenges
Knowledge is tested in quiz challenges – correct answers earn trophies for the Galleon.
Personalization
Happy and the Galleon can be customized by unlocking colors and accessories in the in-game store. Personalization strengthens the emotional bond, promotes creativity and ensures long-term motivation, as the gaming experience can be actively shaped.
Community interaction
In the photo challenges, in-game photos on predefined topics are submitted and voted for the favorite a week later. This strengthens the sense of community and gives the game a competitive character. The top 3 receive a physical postcard from Ecomedia with their winning picture.
Seasonal competitions
Non-cash prizes are awarded for Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter challenges, which increases engagement and strengthens the customer relationship with Ecomedia.
Particularly noteworthy
Business simulation & storytelling
The game ecosystem and mechanics are designed to keep players coming back regularly to manage their progress, make new investments and receive ongoing rewards, all while being involved in an ongoing story. This blend of strategy and narrative keeps the game engaging.
Learning through recurring interaction
Every time they log in, players subconsciously engage with the core themes. Even when collecting resources or managing their production, they experience toner production in action and the principles of the circular economy.
Player decisions influence the game
Every decision changes the playing experience – be it through investments in machine upgrades, sustainable projects and personalizations or by configuring the toner color for customer orders.
Implementation
Due to the immense functional scope of the project as well as individual personalization options per player, a modular and clean technical architecture was of utmost importance. Both the game interface and all spoken texts are available in German and French.
The game speed of each player depends heavily on their level of activity and strategic decisions. For this reason, the game has been designed with main and secondary tasks in such a way that players can log in several times a day or just once a week without losing the flow of the game – even vacation absences have been taken into account.
The web game is specially designed for tablets and desktop computers due to the gaming experience, whereby a hint for optimal use automatically appears on smartphones. Technologically, we rely on a combination of classic HTML5 and interactive 3D visualizations through WebGL/WebGPU using the BabylonJS GameEngine in the front end. The PHP-based backend was linked via a JSON interface.
Special technical features
The permanent toner production facility continues to run continuously on the server side, even when players are offline. When logging in, the current stock level is calculated dynamically and a client-side count-up starts, which displays the stock level in sync with the 3D representation in the game based on configuration and production speed. Periodic server queries ensure that the simulation remains accurate and that every unit produced is visible in real time.
A special backend environment has been created to enable the management and configuration of over 400 game tasks and almost 200 in-game store objects. This makes it possible to add events or change existing tasks at short notice during the game. Thanks to a sophisticated architecture, it is also possible to jump around the timeline at will as an administrator for balancing the game.
All 3D models of the game characters and islands have been optimized for use on the web and configured modularly in the backend so that loading times can be kept as short and performance as high as possible. The diverse modularity makes it possible for the main game character to be configured in an incredible 100 million variants.
Conclusion
Happy’s Sailing Journey delights players with its mixture of gamification, knowledge transfer and business simulation. The high demand and positive feedback have led to the game already being the third sequel in the series.
The game achieves a high level of user engagement, as many players log in several times a week over a period of six months and thus continuously engage with the topic.
A trade fair version is currently being developed that offers a compact insight and draws the attention of new customers to the innovative educational game.
