DIVO'S BUZZ - a game about drugs

The first game I worked on as an official employer of RANJ was Divo's Buzz, a game to teach the player the effects and risks about different kinds of soft and hard drugs.

Divo's Buzz is not playable online, but check out the small trailer (Dutch only, sorry).



The player has the choice between several kinds of quizzes about drugs or an image/text matching game. In the quiz games negative influences of drugs and alcohol are shown in feedback animations of show master Divo. Once a match game or a quiz has been accomplished, a reaction game gets unlocked. In this game Divo is trying to make his way home from the disco. He passes dealers and “friends” offering him various kinds of drugs. If the player decides to use the drugs, then Divo will experience their side effects immediately. The more drugs Divo takes, the more intense the side effects, and the harder it becomes to successfully finish the game.

The good thing about Divo's Buzz is that it does not try to tell you that all drugs are bad (while being hypocritical about alcohol). We tried another route. Divo's Buzz will tell you honestly the effects about a certain drug that you most probably would like and dislike. The good and the bad so to speak. I truly believe that this is the best way to tell teenagers about the dangers about drugs. If you start rambling about "not doing drugs cause it's bad for ya" they just stop listening. Teenagers are curious and like to be taken seriously. But thay are also impatient and usually think that everything that is put in front of them to learn is boring. So we used the reaction game to trick them into playing the quizes. Funny thing is, the more they got to know, the more they liked to play the quizes... probably just to show off to their friends :)