HEAT FUTURES GRANT RECIPIENT
Classroom Crashout
An Interactive 2D Video Game
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This project recieved the Heat Futures Grant to further develop their prototype.
Following the in-person workshop, one team - Amitesh Singh, Priya Vijay and Rohit M - received a microgrant to further develop their prototype over three months. The grant served as a step toward making preferred futures tangible, while creating opportunities to engage a broader public. The resulting prototype was shared through a public exhibition at Lagori Collective in Bengaluru.
Game Design & Development: Siddarth RG
Research & Prototype Development: Amitesh Singh, Malavika Sanil Nair, Priya Vijay, Rohit M
Character Art & Design: Pranav Holla
Environment Artist: Amitesh Singh
Audio Design: Joshua Thachil
Visual Design Support: Natasha Thomas
It is approximated that children spend between 1000 and 1200 hours in school every year. So, what happens when the classroom becomes an unbearably hot box of concrete for most of the year?
Classroom Crash Out is an interactive 2-D game that shows how rising heat affects children’s health and learning in classrooms. Players are invited to install different upgrades inside the classroom to protect children from the heat and help them stay focused in class.
Across India, extreme heat is already disrupting children’s education.
In 2024 alone, over 54 million students in India had their schooling affected by heatwaves and related climate hazards, with many schools closing early, shifting to half days, or shutting down for days at a time. Emerging research shows that hotter days reduce test scores and make it harder for children to concentrate, rest and recover in school.
During the Heat Futures workshop, we wanted to highlight the unique vulnerabilities faced by children due to rising heat. India ranks 26th out of 163 countries in UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index. Yet, we pay very little attention to how children experience and cope with heat. Not only are children’s bodies more vulnerable to heat stress, they are also largely dependent on their caretakers to take protective actions. Despite these risks, however, schools and classrooms are hardly built in ways that recognise children’s comfort as a necessary condition for learning.
Classroom Crash Out was developed over three months as part of the Heat Futures at 78°E.
The team began by asking how children might communicate their changing experience of heat in schools. This brought children’s thermal distress to the centre of the inquiry and led us to explore ways of making this largely invisible condition perceptible to others.
The process involved conversations with teachers, school administrators, architects, public health practitioners and heat researchers. This was complemented with a review of literature spanning across climate adaptation science, education, public health and child physiology. We also conducted a survey with parents of school-going children. These inputs helped us understand heat in classrooms as a layered problem shaped by both built form and everyday rules and routines.
Public exhibition of Classroom Crashout held at Lagori Collective
The game emerged as a way to simulate this intersection and to focus attention on adaptive actions - spatial, behavioural and institutional - that can improve children’s comfort and ability to learn.
PERSONAS
The effect of heat is not uniform across children. The unique vunerabilities of the children are represented through personas.
Differences of age, gender, physical and emotional characteristics come together to create unique vulnerabilities among children. In the game, this is represented through 6 personas, each one representing a set of characteristics that are often ignored in classroom planning and design.
UPGRADES
The game invites players to explore some of the possibilities available for making schools more comfortable spaces for children.
Some upgrades involve changing the physical infrastructure, such as adding extra windows, fans and passive cooling technologies to lower heat retention inside classrooms. Other upgrades involve changing norms and rules, so that children are allowed to slow down, drink water, change positions or rest when they feel distressed. The game underscores the importance of combining different kinds of upgrades to protect children from heat.
Gameplay
Conclusion
Through this game, we are drawing attention to the problem of rising heat and how it affects children’s health and education. By making players experiment with different classroom changes, the game opens up a conversation on what it means to design schools as spaces of care and comfort rather than spaces of control, discipline and discomfort.
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