Digital game demonstrates the power of religion for climate change education

Conversations about climate change often point to catastrophes like the melting of the polar ice caps or forest fires in California. But for people who live far away from these destructive events, the global urgency of these problems may not resonate.

Shloka, a new digital game produced by scholars at the University of California, Santa Cruz, uses Hindu deities, practices, and narratives to communicate the problems of climate change to people in India and throughout the Hindu diaspora. As players encounter gods from their religion who teach them about local issues like water pollution and smog, the culturally familiar framework enables a deeper understanding of climate responsibility.

"Even my grandmother could play this game and say "I know this character, I know what they're talking about,'" said Sai Maram, a Ph.D. student at the Baskin School of Engineering and the game's lead designer. "If that character says you should be doing something good for the climate, they have a better chance of listening."

The process of designing and evaluating the game is described in a new study, which won the Best Paper award at the 2025 Association of Computer Machinery Designing Interactive Systems Conference. The researchers set out to study how the narratives, metaphors, and culturally familiar frameworks of religion can be integrated into games about climate change, and how this increases player engagement with and learning from the game.

"The use of faith and culture to enrich game mechanics that can help push the needle on behavior change in regards to big issues facing our world, like climate change, is very promising and novel," said Magy Seif El-Nasr, professor of computational media and the senior study author. "In this work, we explore the potential impact of the use of faith and its implications for behavior change and motivation. If successful at scale, this can help us look into other faiths and cultural norms that can help us develop more impactful games for climate change."

Religion for games

Maram studies the connection between religion and games: how religion can inspire game design, and how games can act as a connection to faith. Both religion and games are powerful storytelling tools, and familiar characters and narrative are proven to be strong forces to motivate people to play games.

Drawing on his own background and faith, Maram created a game that uses elements from Hinduism to explore religion in climate games. In the Hindu faith, many elements of the natural world are sacred, but climate degradation threatens these important sites.

"The sun is a God, the mountain is a God, the river is a God, and they're perceived to be very holy—but ironically, some of these are very polluted," Maram said. "We wanted to play on that satire, and think about how we can educate and remind people it's your duty and responsibility to treat it well, and let people see climate change from a lens of ethics, religion, and faith."

Playing Shloka

Shloka centers around the adventures of a main character of the same name. Through seven levels, Shloka travels to different lands, each with its own climate-related challenge, such as oil pollution in the Holy Ganges river, smog at holy sites on hilltops, or garbage piles on holy beaches.

Each level has four stages—knowledge, attitude, efficacy, and hope—based on the International Game Developer Association Climate Special Interest Group's four-step framework for creating climate-focused games.

The knowledge stage is fulfilled as Ganesha, the god of wisdom, offers a lesson about the environment to Shloka. In the attitude stage, the player performs a ritual, such as a chant or a hand gesture called a mudra, to invoke a different Hindu deity, who gives them a tool to solve the environmental problem.

In the efficacy stage, the player uses the tool to complete a task, like absorbing oil, clearing smog, or collecting garbage. In the final hope stage, the deity returns to explain to Shloka the root causes of these environmental problems, and what can be done to take action as individuals. For example, during the religious festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, Hindus offer a model of Ganesha into a local body of water to celebrate the god. The game encourages people to use clay models, which can dissolve into the water without harming it, rather than the plastic models which have become widespread.

Learning in India

To develop the game, Maram traveled to his home country of India to conduct an ethnographic study, visiting important, remote religious sites, documenting with photos, videos, and notes, and talking with stakeholders such as religious priests. These conversations informed iterations of the game, encouraging a move away from any combat-based gameplay to stay true to the Hindu values of nonviolence and peace.

"Talking to those communities helped us understand if we were being accurate, sensitive, and considerate. They are the custodians of that culture, so it was important to understand their opinions," Maram said. "They're also curious and excited to see their culture represented in a positive way that can contribute to the larger problems, especially in a world where there's a lot of conflict based on faith."

Back at UC Santa Cruz, the developers used ethnographic information to inform elements of the game, like specific pollution issues present at religious sites and existing efforts to dispose of waste. Observations of chants, breathing practices, mudras, inscriptions, and more were digitized for the game. The researchers trained speech and vision AI models to use a phone or computer microphone or camera to detect if the player is correctly performing the ritual.

"Each of these rituals had to be digitized to make it part of gameplay," Maram said. "This was new for people, because they've practiced rituals, but they've never seen the consequence of a ritual. It's pretty unique in that way."

Measuring engagement

To understand if Shloka met their goals, the researchers conducted user testing to compare it side-by-side to other climate games, asking people about narrative elements, like the messaging and relatability of the game. They tested the game with Hindu-identifying people locally at UC Santa Cruz, as well as people from Thapar University, Hindu temple groups, and from a stall the researchers set up at a Hindu religious gathering.

Through surveys and follow-up interviews, they found that players strongly resonated with the game's messaging, with the religious framing building interest, engagement, and learning from the game.

"The larger takeaway is that cultural familiarity drives immersion," Marman said. "People are much more interested to see the culture represented. They're much more interested to see the teachings of their culture being shown through a game in which they can interact with."

Now, the researchers are interested in bringing the game to Hindus around the world, whether that be in schools, temples, or other cultural spaces.