Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Entertainment
Daisy Jackson

The free computer game teaching social distancing to children

A new free-to-play computer game has been released to teach children about social distancing.

To win Can You Save The World?, players will have to keep their distance from other characters on a busy street.

The cartoon character will also have to dodge sneezes and collect PPE masks as they go, delivering the masks to checkpoints for health workers.

You can collect groceries to improve your energy too.

(Can You Save The World? Martin Jacob and Richard Wiseman)

The game has been created by Professor Richard Wiseman and games designer Martin Jacob to educate people of all ages on the importance of social distancing.

Wiseman is a professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire and has written several psychology books.

The game is free to play but currently only works on computers, rather than mobile.

Each character on the busy street is surrounded by a green radius, demonstrating how close you can be to be at risk of infection transmission.

The number of lives saved is tallied up on the screen as you play the game.

If you come too close to another person, it's game over, and your character has to go and self-isolate.

Can You Save The World? was released last Friday and has already seen more than 10,000 players have a go.

You can see how many lives you can save by visiting martin-jacob.itch.io/can-you-save-the-world

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.