During the 2007-2008 school year, Global Kids Youth Leaders at Canarsie High School, Brooklyn selected the topic of Hurricane Katrina and worked with game developers Digital Creations to create Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City. The web-based game recognizes local heroes that emerged during the disaster while educating its players about the essentials of disaster readiness.

Tempest is a side-scrolling platform game set in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina Disaster of 2005. The game's main character is Vivica Water, a young woman from New Orleans who moved to New York after surviving the storm. The game takes place in a dream Vivica has where she searches for her mother and helps her neighbors as the hero she wishes she could have been.

Tempest is meant to be a fun adventure game that also addresses meaningful, accurate and difficult historical situations. There are three main educational goals for the game:

• Teach players about how everyday residents of New Orleans acted heroically to help each other. This is a celebration of New Orleans residents and their culture.
• Emphasize what are perhaps the two most important priorities in any disaster: communication and use of local resources, needs, and knowledge. The relief effort in Hurricane Katrina was severely hampered by the poor communication between government agencies and through most media outlets. Top down disaster management also led responders to ignore local resources and knowledge that could have saved many lives. Even in the aftermath, local needs and wishes are largely being ignored during rebuilding.
• Draw attention to the continuing struggle in New Orleans as residents fight for housing in 2008. The city was destroyed by negligence, and, unfortunately, it is now being rebuilt without homes for many of its most loyal residents.

A video of a full play of the first alpha of the game, complete with missing content and bugs.



Early Character Designs

                     

Early Set Designs

Early Story Designs


Student Made Storyboards