Living Labs: Harmony Lake

an educational wetlands ecosystem simulator

Harmony Lake is an educational game designed and developed for use in the classroom to teach ecological concepts in a fun and intuitive way. Players take on the role of park ranger by dutifully managing the delicate balance between the living and non-living factors while adapting to Oregon Trail-esque random events.

I built a deep simulation of interacting ecological factors which churns out interesting real-world natural phenomena behind Harmony Lake's simple and light visual presentation.

My favorite part was composing and developing the responsive soundtrack; changes in the ecosystem are reflected in the composition of the background music--when your ecosystem is in a state of harmonious balance, the music composition is unified and whole. You'll know when your ecosystem is out of sorts when you start to hear it in the composition of the music. When things get really swampy... expect a lot of banjo. 

I built Harmony Lake in Unity, and coded it in C#.