Play with sound on! Press the green flag to start the game. Press the red octagon to end the game early. A local mine just had a breach. Toxic metals are flowing into your beautiful stream and threaten your life as a fish... But life must go on! Press the space bar to eat the plankton. Use the left and right arrow keys to turn. Avoid eating the toxic mercury. Some design considerations: - After learning about how mine breaches can harm fish due to the toxic metals they release, the harmful mercury and selenium found polluting the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and bioaccumulation, I got the inspiration for this game. I may have taken some slight liberties to make this game. - I know that the background doesn't necessarily show a "stream" habitat, but I wanted to pick a picture that was free to use for sure. - If you lose due to eating all the mercury, the screen that appears is orange. I tried to get the color to match that of the river after the Gold King Mine Spill. - If you win by eating all the plankton, the final screen says "you win... for now" to hint that due to bioaccumulation, the fish may have consumed high levels of mercury anyways just by eating the plankton. - Since some fish (like herring) eat zooplankton, I decided to find a picture of the iconic Spongebob character Plankton to fulfill the role of the food. If you eat him, you may notice that his facial expression changes. - When you eat some mercury, there is a special sound effect to show that you did something bad. This is just so the player knows that they ate mercury. - The plankton and mercury move randomly, so sometimes they may end up in corners that you can't reach. If this happens, just wait for them to bounce around until they come near you again.
Background music is by by Meydän, found on freemusicarchive.org. Sound effects and most images come from the free Scratch library. The images of Plankton come from Google searches.
