The Canary Islands Ministry of Tourism has launched the video game 'Find the Seasouls' on the well-known international platform Roblox, an experience designed to promote environmental care among the new generations of travelers in a fun and educational way.
"Our tourism promotion calls for respect for the natural parks, protected areas and biodiversity of the islands not only as a sun and beach destination," explained the area's councillor, Jéssica de León, at the global launch of the video game, which took place in Madrid this morning.
De León assured that with this foray into Roblox, from Turismo de Canarias "we continue to innovate through creative ways and new channels to connect with different audiences, whom we invite to virtually explore our islands and value their biodiversity."
The video game focuses on a digital version of the archipelago where users can have fun while learning and discovering the culture, fauna and flora of the Canary Islands in a fun and entertaining way.
"The objective of this project is to connect with the tourist of the future, focusing on educating about the care of the environments when visiting the destinations in a current scenario in which people know and interact with tourist destinations in the virtual and physical worlds," detailed De León.
'Find the Seasouls' is the first foray of a European tourist destination into Roblox, the global immersive social platform that has more than 80 million daily active users worldwide and has become one of the main meeting places for Generation Alpha, people born from 2010 onwards, and Generation Z, young people between 18 and 25 years old.
The video game was launched on December 20 to begin testing the public's response and in less than a month it has received the visit of more than one million users and a positive rating of 96%. 'Find the Seasouls' is subsidized by the European Regional Development Fund (Feder) and has its own web.
"As a world reference destination, by being part of Roblox we seek to create a new type of ecosystem that connects both ways of living the destination experience, both in person through travel and virtually from the screen. These are two ways of experiencing the Canary Islands that can be experienced independently, but are complementary and mutually enriching," added the Marketing Director of Turismo de Islas Canarias, Elena González.
Canarian biodiversity
In this playful experience, users travel with their avatar through the eight islands in search of very special marine creatures, the 'Seasouls', 160 characters inspired by animals that inhabit the seas and islands, such as the black stingray, the burgajo or the beaked whales, from which they learn characteristics such as their name or habitat, among others.
These creatures and their description have been created in collaboration with the oceanographer Cristina Fernández Gil, in order to achieve maximum fidelity to the biodiversity of the archipelago.
In addition, the experience recreates, with Roblox aesthetics, some of the most representative places of each island in order to publicize its natural, landscape and architectural richness. In total, it represents more than one hundred spaces of the archipelago, both terrestrial and marine.
The journey of 'Find the Seasouls' begins when the avatar lands on the chosen island in a parachute, where he has to find and trap the 'Seasouls' while touring emblematic points, such as the Sabinar de El Hierro or the volcanic landscape of Timanfaya, in Lanzarote. In the search, the player collects elements that will help him find the different creatures, accumulating limpets as coins that will serve him in his mission.
Since the experience is aimed primarily at the youngest, it has been designed prioritizing the educational values linked to the sustainability of the islands and taking into account a maximum time of exposure to the screen for younger users. Roblox automatically translates the video game into fourteen main languages, including Spanish, English, German, French, Portuguese, Korean or Japanese.
