Introduction
The nine-year-old smart, ambitious, and spirited Meena has been a beloved character and a role model figure for millions of girls growing up in South Asia. Named after the protagonist, the cartoon television series Meena by UNICEF first aired in 1993 in Bangladesh. The series, through the eyes of Meena, addresses social causes with wonderful storytelling, tackling issues like gender inequalities, health and hygiene practices, misconceptions, and more, to educate and inspire children.
The Meena Game is inspired by this popular cartoon series. Every year, UNICEF releases new Meena stories set in South Asia, portraying the lives, struggles and triumphs of the youth. To craft such stories, UNICEF created the Meena Game with Riseup Labs as the development partner.
The game features some intriguing tasks and challenges the players must solve. Offering a rich and immersive experience, the game enhances children’s coordination while inspiring imagination and creativity. Set in a beautifully illustrated rural environment reminiscent of a painted world, players learn about health, nutrition, education, gender equity, child rights, emergencies, and more. With the main character Meena hailing from a village, the game serves as a powerful tool for inspiring young girls and youth from rural backgrounds.
The Objective
To develop the Meena Game as a dynamic, engaging, and educational tool that enhances coordination, sparks creativity, and inspires youngsters.
There are several goals behind the game’s creation. Most importantly, its storytelling in the form of a game is aimed to inspire children and adolescents from rural backgrounds. The game also cultivates social interactions, creative and artistic skills, health and hygiene awareness, and social and moral values in youngsters.
Below is a detailed breakdown of the core objectives in making the Meena Game.
- Replicate the character from the beloved TV series.
- Build the rural game world with illustrations and designs.
- Support offline feature to make the game widely available.
- Make the game compatible to low-end devices to accommodate village users.
- Raise fund for child protection through the game.
The Challenge
To develop a highly optimized and compact game complete with intriguing levels, superb animation, and graphics.
Developing Meena Game entailed some unique challenges. The game, featuring intriguing levels and visual graphics, had to be highly optimized for low configuration devices.
Listed below are the detailed breakdown of the main challenges.
- Developing Meena within 50MB to save space and internet use.
- Developing 3 types of dynamic environments within the compact size.
- Developing 50 unique mini-games within the compact size.
- Developing 500+ Animations, 35+ Characters, and 14 levels.
- Achieve maximum optimization for low-end devices.
- Optimizing performance while preserving quality.
The Solution
Leveraging advanced game development, concept design and engineering expertise to create the game while also integrating revenue schemes.
Combining the expertise of game developers, artists, design engineers, and a cross-functional expert team was instrumental in creating the Meena game. The gameplay also leverages on superb storytelling to engage the players and foster awareness.
The following solutions were implemented to develop and achieve the game’s objectives.
- Modifying the Cocos2D-X game engine to reduce game’s size to 50 MB.
- Using C++ to achieve maximum optimization.
- Developing and optimizing all the assets for low-end devices.
- Developing character assets in 16bit instead of 32bit.
- Using Spine for all the animations.
- Integrating ads to generate funds for UNICEF child Protection.
The Impact
The Meena Game has inspired children across 175 countries, achieving widespread downloads, and generated significant ad revenue to fund child protection initiatives.
From inspiring children to generating ad revenue for child protection schemes, the Meena game exemplifies the successful blend of education and gaming.
Global Reach and User Base
Download Meena Game
Meena Game is available for Android and iOS devices. Join millions of players in a fun adventure and make a difference!
Related Insight
Enjoyed this case study? Discover the impact of Meena Game and Meena Game 2 in this fantastic read below.
The Meena Game, first released on December 10, 2016, quickly garnered excitement and nostalgia among gamers, leading to over 5 million downloads on Google Play and the iOS App Store within six years.
This page was last edited on 31 July 2024, at 1:44 pm
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