From the National Film Board of Canada comes I Love Potatoes, an adorable adventure game that promotes conservation, reflecting on one’s own consumption behaviors, and collaboratively taking action for social change. Students play as Chips, a being who lives in the Land of Potatoes. He and the other villagers feed potatoes to the Potato Monster in return for food, supplies, and various luxury items, and the monster puts out potato peels as waste. But some of the villagers get too greedy and demand too much, overwhelming the Potato Monster. The mayor doesn’t demonstrate responsible leadership, and the potato plants die. It’s up to players (playing as Chips) to determine what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to prevent it from happening again. Along the way, players will need to make new friends, work together to solve problems, and direct their society in a more sustainable direction. They’ll convince the monster to eat potato peels instead of whole potatoes — helping with the peel build-up problem — and they’ll remake discarded luxury items into machines to help with everyday problems. Through these actions, the game promotes using waste in useful ways and reconfiguring discarded items to make them into something new. Between tasks, Chips runs into Tuberosa, a mentor who provides Chips with helpful messages and lessons, giving a modicum of context for the tasks he’s carrying out. The major characters in the game are based on real-life social innovators whom students can learn about inside the app.

Organization: National Film Board of Canada