Online social distancing game racks up 10,000 plays in its first two days   

An online game aimed at helping children understand the importance of social distancing amid the novel coronavirus outbreak has racked up over 10,000 plays during the first two days after the launch.

The online game, ‘Can You Save the World?’, helps players of all ages become better at social distancing in the real world. The players have to stay away from people in busy streets, collect masks and avoid sneezes while the final score shows how many lives have been saved.

It is a vertically scrolling video game, co-developed by a UK-based professor of psychology, where players are tasked with walking through a virtual city while social distancing.

Co-designer Professor Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire said he was inspired by the tricky task of keeping his distance while outside, Mail Online reported

‘The game came about because I was out and about on the street like everyone else, trying to avoid other people, social distancing, and I thought “this just feels like a computer game!”,’ he added.

‘I think it’s the first social distancing game and the first Covid game. It encourages everyone to avoid others and secondly makes the point that it does make a difference.’

The game is primarily intended as an educational tool for children to demonstrate in a fun and accessible way how social distancing works.

‘We worked on it around the clock to get it out quickly,’ Professor Wiseman said.

The game is currently only available via a web browser, but the team have plans to make an app version for Android and iOS mobile devices, which should be available soon.

Each player is tasked with controlling a virtual avatar up the city street and have to use the arrow keys to move left and right as they go.

‘You should be staying in – but if you have to go out, can you save the world?,’ players are asked.

‘Each infected person can pass the virus on to many other people. So each time you avoid someone, you are saving lots and lots of lives.’

The aim of the game is to keep out of other people’s ‘infectious radius’ – a contagious green zone that replicates the two-metre distancing requirement set out by the government to reduce infections.

Each person successfully avoided adds ‘lives saved’ to the player’s scoreboard – however, if the player collides with someone else in the street or fail to keep out of the infectious radius, ‘lives’ are taken from the points tally.

If players collide with too many people, the game is over and they become ‘confined’.

In the psychology world, Professor Wiseman said the game caters to pro-social gaming, which encourages positive social behaviours.

‘What I’ve tried to do is lighthearted fun stuff that gets the message over, there’s been a surprisingly large number of studies looking at the effects of what’s called pro-social gaming,’ he said.