Some cartoons and characters live the roles which we wish. Or sometimes, some characters do what’s right to correct society according to its time.
Meena represents a significant achievement for UNICEF in Bangladesh in promoting child rights. As a brand, the iconic animation character Meena is recognized by 97% of urban children and adolescents and 81% of children and adolescents in rural areas in Bangladesh, with a large percentage able to cite some key messages. A cartoon that started in 1992, her popularity base now extends into the second generation. Meena has proved to be a communication tool with unique potential.
Meena Game is the use of video gaming potentials by creating 'Meena Game' for Android Devices (free downloadable and playable on all platforms). It is mainly for raising awareness and promoting child rights.
This is a unique concept that will help children address a specific problem. Or, learn a particular skill related to health, nutrition, education, gender equity, protection, emergency, etc. This game is a digital platform for children to learn issues related to their well-being through entertainment.
As a result, this game recreates the journey of Meena in devices with new twists and turns. The overall game is based on the existing 24 'Meena Cartoon episodes' addressing respective issues.
As a part of the aim to create awareness, UNICEF, with the development team at Riseup Labs, continues to speak with children to find out what stories people want to hear. This game is a new step to reach their expectations.
This is a significant and one of the very first steps taken by UNICEF Bangladesh in creating a mobile game for digital platforms as ‘games’ are gaining popularity among the target audience. Also, games are found to be a useful tool to deliver education through entertainment.
Meena Game has been a great addition to the adventure category since its release. The reason is simple. Meena herself is an adventurous character. All her episodes have been something that is out of the box.
The Meena stories are entertaining and fun and reflect the realities of girls' living in South Asia.
The stories move around the adventures of Meena, Raju (her brother), her pet parrot Mithu, and members of her family and village community.
The stories cover education, health, gender equity, freedom from exploitation and abuse.
Meena's invention is from a need to find culturally appropriate ways. The main aim is to communicate messages that address girls' empowerment in one of the world's most challenging gender environments.
Showing a healthy, personable child who can engage constructively with her family and her community to help overcome serious issues has proved extremely popular.
Meena has proven to be a useful messaging device when implemented alongside other program interventions and has enhanced girls' perceptions. Many children have wanted to be like Meena. Or have considered her a role model for their efforts to change their worlds.
Meena was never afraid of the challenges and faced them with courage. This automatically converted it into an adventure game because the gamer has to cross many obstacles and make many decisions to win and go forward.
Not only adventure, the Meena game was a perfect example of an edutainment game as well. The great response of the game and various videos of the gameplay on Youtube prove that.
The best example of the success of this game is definitely its download result. Today, this game has 3 Million Plus downloads. This clearly shows how much people loved this game already.
This edutainment game instantly gets a personal touch and connection with parents. The character Meena is someone whom everyone knows since the 90s. So, when UNICEF and development company Riseup Labs
In the first step of Meena's game development, the professional game designers of Riseup Labs brainstormed about the game ideas to generate more idealistic ideas. UNICEF was in constant touch with them.
In this step, they work on the ideas considering thoughts of what users like, fun generation, and educational parts of the game that UNICEF delivered through their Meena Cartoon episodes. With users' study, they viewed the possibilities of success, user motives, and behavior regarding the game. They made a bunch of basic concepts of games to choose for final work.
The target audiences of this game are all children aging three and above and young generations to achieve the following:
In this step, the game designers worked on making concept arts and concise documentation. Short briefs of all the previous raw concepts were there. These concept arts were to share the idea with other team members to judge the images, whether acceptable or not, and provided a basic idea of the game they will work on.
This concept finalization part is crucial for the game development. This is the first step game developers evaluate the game idea based on current scenario and trend, and user likability. After finalizing the concepts, they were sent to UNICEF to assess the game-play.
The game artworks are divided into four main parts, which are-
Animation Development: Character animations, and others.
Level objective: This level's goal is to create awareness of girl's (Meena) education. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF focused on girls' inferior status in South Asia and tried to draw attention to girls' education. So, this level has been developed to emphasize the importance of a child's education.
Gameplay: Here, the main objective of the game is to find six chickens through different gameplays.
Characters in the level: Lali, Meena, Mithu, Raju, Thief
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
Users have to ride on Lali as Meena and take Lali forward to collect chickens. Users have to collect eggs, brooms, and other falling elements in the ground to complete the achievement. By containing those elements, users will receive full stars at the end of the level.
Finally, Meena has to chase down the thief who's running away with the last chicken. There will be minimal time but competitive gameplay.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness of the importance of proper hygiene. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF focused on using latrines and washing hands with safe, clean water and soap or ashes. This level has been developed to change daily habits to prevent deadly diseases like diarrhea.
Gameplay: Here the game's main objective is to make three wishes to keep our health good and prevent diseases through different gameplays.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Village boy, Genie
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
The user will find Genie to help him/her build Village Bridge to go forward. For this s/he has to find the magical lamp.
After that, gamers have to build a toilet with Genie to send the kid to the bathroom. There are other obstacles forward, like- germs, ponds, etc. Users have to go ahead, use magic carpet, soap to survive germs, and some different gameplays to make health awareness.
Level objective: This level's goal is to create awareness of girls' education's importance. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF focused on the importance of education for girl children in South Asia.
Gameplay: Here, the game's main objective is to send Meena to school through different gameplays.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Meena's Mother, Raju, Dokandar, Truck driver, Meena riding cycle
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
Users will have to play as Meena cycling and go through obstacles to deliver milk. After that, she has to play Mithu and send the money to Meena's mother. Finally, the user has to play as Meena and go to school within the time limit.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness on equal rights for boys and girls. According to UNICEF's 'Meena Cartoon' episode, in many families, girl children are routinely given less food than their male siblings that affects their growth and development. So, this level has been developed to emphasize the importance of equal rights for boys and girls.
Gameplay: Here, the main objective of the game is equality for Meena and Raju, and complete the objectives of the level through different gameplays.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Lali, Raju
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
Users will have to ride on Lali and go through obstacles. There Meena will find a kite in a tree, s/he has to throw and take down the kite.
After that s/he has to go forward with Lali as Lali eats pepper and start running to drink water from the pond. Finally, the user will find Meena and Raju in front of a tree, where s/he has to throw woods and collect mangos.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness against eve-teasing. According to UNICEF's 'Meena Cartoon' episode, Mithu tells how Meena faced a group of eve-teasing boys. So, this level has been developed to create awareness against eve-teasing and suggests ways that children should deal with this kind of issue.
Gameplay: Here, the game's main objective shows equality for Meena and Raju and complete the goals of the level through different gameplays.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Raju, Dipu, Rita
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
Here, Meena will face eve-teasing by Dipu at the beginning of the game and have to go after him.
In a while, Dipu will find Rita in the middle of the road and tease her by taking Rita's bag. Again Meena will chase Dipu to bring back that bag from him.
Finally, users have set up plans for Dipu to punish him, to create awareness against eve-teasing.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness against dowry. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF highlights the destructive social consequences associated with the practice of dowry and teaches that dowry is illegal. So, this level has been developed to create awareness of the issue of dowry.
Gameplay: Here, the main objective of the game shows the destructive social consequences associated with the practice of dowry, where Meena has to create awareness of the issue through different gameplays.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Dokandar, Dokandar's brother, Dokandar's Nephew, Village Man, Village woman, Village matbor, Dowry victim girl, Dowry victim girl's parents
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
Here, Meena will see a dowry victim family and dowry group asking people to give marriage proposal. Meena has to go forward through different obstacles and hide as those people don't see her. After that, Meena has to listen to their secret discussion and run away from them as they chase Meena.
Finally, Meena has to complete the objectives by telling the victim's family about creating awareness.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness to prevent diarrheal disease. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, diarrhea is one of South Asia's common conditions, and although it is easily curable, a significant number of children die from diarrhea every year. Thus UNICEF focuses on preventing diarrheal diseases, particularly in children. So, this level has been developed to show effective treatment of diarrhea.
Gameplay: Here, the game's main objective is to show how to prevent diarrhea and create awareness of preventing the diseases and giving treatment to children.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Meena's mother, Meena's father, Rani (Meena's younger sister), Meena riding cycle, Doctor app, Medicine shopkeeper.
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
Here, Meena will see her younger sister, Rani as a girl with diarrhea. Meena has to find and collect different things through various obstacles that diarrhea affected person should drink.
After that, Meena has to go to a medicine shop in rainy and stormy weather to buy or saline for Rani.
Finally, users have to play as Mithu and send the orsaline to their mother and avoid different obstacles, which is the primary awareness of giving or saline to the child as fast as possible.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness of child labor. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF shows Meena's family's story when the turn of fate takes Meena and her family from their rural home; Meena started living as a domestic worker and was exposed to the misery faced by urban working children. This level has been developed to show the importance of providing all working children with dignity, right working conditions, and education access.
Gameplay: Here, the main objective of the game is to show the importance of education, a right working environment, and dignity for the working children; also, creating awareness of child labor.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Meena's father, Angry housewife, Boy playing with toys.
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
In the beginning, the user will find Meena's misery while collecting water from outside the home with very carefulness. While playing the game, the user will discover how hard it is for a child to carry a full bucket of water and other tasks. After that, the user will have to wash clothes at the right time and right ways; otherwise, they will find the housewife angry. Later on, Meena has to clean plates and other dishes in the kitchen.
Finally, Meena finds out her father is standing outside of the house, but she can't get to her without making the child happy.
Level objective: This level aims to create awareness of how to give birth to a child safely. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF shows a king and a pregnant queen. Meena helped the queen give birth to children with proper care. So, this level has been developed to offer how to take care of a pregnant woman.
Gameplay: Here, the game's main objective is to show how to give birth to a child safely and ways to care for a pregnant woman.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Doctor app, Meena & Doctor APA riding fantasy horse, Fantasy world king, Fantasy world pregnant queen.
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
The user will find the pregnant queen lying on the bed and suffering from her problems. Meena has to solve her problems with proper collective items, e.g., soap, medicine box, etc., and fly with a fantasy horse.
Then, she will have to bring Doctor to the queen as soon as possible, overcoming different obstacles, like- bees.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness of complementary feeding of malnutritious children. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF shows a story of a malnutrition affected child, how she suffers from the problem, and what should be done to help a victim. This level has been developed to show what tasks are required to take care of a malnutrition affected child.
Gameplay: Here, the game's main objective is to take care of a malnutrition child (Rani) to show the tasks to make a child nutritious.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Meena's mother, Rani (Meena's younger sister), Raju, Snake, Scorpion.
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
The user will find Rani as a malnutrition affected child lying in her mother's lap. The user has to play as Meena and collect complementary feeding items in different places, overcoming various obstacles.
Here, Meena has to collect eggs falling from hens on top of trees, different vegetables, avoiding snakes and scorpions. Also, gamers have to play as Raju to catch fish from the pond. These are the food items that a child should eat for nutrition.
Level objective: This level's goal is to create awareness of how to behave with an autistic child. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF shows a story of an autistic child (Onu) who can't understand things as a regular person and face many problems. Meena helps him get rid of those problems. So, this level has been developed to show what tasks are required to support an autistic child.
Gameplay: Here, the game's main objective is to how we should behave with an autistic child to make them normal and understand things easily.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Onu (autistic child), Lali, Dokandar, Ojha, Teacher APA, Dipu
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
The user will find Onu in front of school and face problems due to his autism. Meena has to help her hold her hands and overcome the obstacles. In the middle of the road, the user will find Dipu teasing Onu, making sounds, and play as Mithu to create good sounds that make comfort for Onu to go forward.
Finally, playing as Mithu and Lali, the user has to help Onu from the Dokandan and Ojha.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness against corporal punishment. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF shows a story of a naughty child (Mono) who teases everyone and doesn't understand how to behave appropriately. However, UNICEF tries to create awareness of making the naughty child understand things without corporal punishments. So, this level has been developed to show the understanding against the corporal penalty.
Gameplay: Here the game's main objective is to play as Mono and Meena and overcome different obstacles related to corporal punishment.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Dipu, Mono, Mono's father, Vegetable hawker, Dokandar's brother
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games at this level while completing the main objective.
At the beginning, the user will find Mono, who tries to bring down mangoes from a tree with a slingshot and hit a village person.
Later he again plays with Dipu with a slingshot and hits Meena. After that Meena has to chase Mono and avoid stones thrown by Mono.
Finally, Mono gets hurt after a collision with his father, and his father gives him corporal punishments. However, Mono helps his father hit different flying objects through the air and shoots his father. Completing those achievements helps to create awareness against corporal punishments.
Level objective: The objective of this level is to create awareness against early marriage. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF shows the issue of early marriage. And teaches that 18 is the legal age of marriage for women and emphasizes the importance of girls' education. The episode also describes how early marriage affects a girl's physical/mental health and pregnancy-related problems. So, this level has been developed to create awareness against early marriage.
Gameplay: Here, the main objective of the game is to play as Mono and Meena and overcome a different obstacle related to corporal punishment.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Raju, Rita, Rita's father, Dokandar, Babu (Dokandar's son), Police, Police riding a police car
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games in this level while completing the main objective.
The user will find Meena, Raju, and Rita playing rope jumping and have to play as Meena. In a while, Rita's father takes Rita away. Following Rita's traces, Meena finds out about the early marriage of her friend Rita.
When the Dokandar finds out that Meena learned the issue, he chases Meena. Meena has to run away and bring the police to stop the marriage, which the awareness against early marriage.
Level objective: This level's goal is to create awareness about the tasks we should do during Flood. According to the 'Meena Cartoon' episode, UNICEF focuses on avoiding injury during a flood. By building fences to keep small children away from water and using electric wire safely to prevent electric shocks, etc. So, this level has been developed to create awareness of the tasks we should do during flood-time.
Gameplay: Here, the game's main objective is to spread awareness of what we need to do during the flood-time and how to avoid different kinds of casualties.
Characters in the level: Meena, Mithu, Village woman, Baby child (girl), Little boy, Little girl, Kidnapper
Mini-games: Users will find multiple mini-games in this level while completing the main objective.
The user will find a flood situation where a little boy fell into the water. The user has to play as Meena and help the children from getting drowned in the water. Meena has to help a child from getting kidnapped, which is another casualty of flood-time. Meena has to help a child by keeping away from water and collect different toys for her.
This is the procedure where the QA testers test the preliminary version of a level and previous levels. The designers, developers, sound engineers, artists, and animators had to make changes based on QA testers' findings and new given input by UNICEF. For ensuring the quality of the game, they test on several things.
After making the final changes, developers gave the final build for testing. This is the final version of a level that is ready to publish in stores.
The final build of each level was sent to the QA testers. They check all other previous tiers as well as the new level and make a document for developers. Game developers follow the form to make a necessary correction for the final build version (if required) of the game.
This project was to deliver the Meena Cartoon's educational message in a new way and spread it most vastly. As mobile games' demand has been increasing in recent years, it has become popular among all ages.
So, UNICEF's target of spreading educational and social awareness news through games is very successful. Riseup Labs is happy that UNICEF chose them to work on this fantastic project to develop the young generations. We believe people of all ages will like the game; it'll help them understand the social issues and problems and act on those accordingly.
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