Tacological - a VR taco truck game that encourages sustainability
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My roles: Programmer (front-end, back-end)
Made with: Unity, Maya, Adobe Photoshop
Tacological is a VR taco truck game that aims to teach users about sustainable practices in small businesses. Players would have to choose between two types of food, such as expensive, locally grown lettuce or cheap, mass-produced lettuce, to use in the tacos they sell to customers. This is meant to simulate business decisions small business owners would have to make, and teach users what type of sustainable practices exist, and how realistic and easy or difficult it can be to transition to sustainable practices.
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Check out the GitHub repository!
"Green facts" informed the player of benefits or disadvantages of buying one ingredient over another. Often, the more sustainable option would be more expensive, so the player would have to carefully decide what to choose.
The "translator" would notify the player of the customer's order. Once served, the customers would react to the types of tacos served. Some would want cheaper tacos, and some would want more eco-friendly ingredients, so not all customers could be satisfied.
Once customers received their tacos, they would react accordingly. If they were pleased with the ingredients used, a dancing animation would play, as seen.
User Study
As our project was created with the goal of educating users in mind, we conducted user studies after producing a two-level playable version of our game. We conducted pre- and post-game surveys to gauge the level of impact our game had on players. For example, we asked players about how important food's environmental impact was to them, and compared the results. The percent of players who valued food’s environmental impact as extremely or very important rose after playing Tacological from 18.14% to 59.09%. To see more results, see the files below.
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Find our user two-page abstract here: and our poster here: