Electrocity - possibly more addictive than Civilization

I'm warning anyone who like me once was addicted to Sid Meier's Civilization - do not check out Electrocity. If you don't come crying to me when this weeks timesheets has "research" written all over them. New Zealand agency Rivet (formerly Draft) created this online game for the power company Genesis Energy which can be played in school, since it actually teaches you a little something about power and the environment. You can see Rivet's presentation of Electrocity here and you can play the game here. I bankrupted plenty of towns and found that building nuclear power plants really ticks the population off. At the end of the game you'll get a score.

Hovering over each letter will give hints on what you did right and what you could do better next time.

The scoreboard on the left tells you how much money you're making, how the population is feeling (happy!) and the bars below will tell you if you need to plan for more energy generating resources or fix the environment.

You can also zoom in to areas of your map and check out how the amusement park is doing, for example (I wasn't going to quit playing until I got an amusement park, dangit!)

The game’s creator, Tom Markham, says: “ElectroCity is educational, but it’s also really fun to play. You start with a pristine New Zealand landscape of rivers, mountains and bush. Then it’s a case of deciding what you want to do with it. You can create a clean and green tourist town or a monstrous metropolis with millions of citizens. You can even do nothing.

“Unlike other building games, our scoring system does not force players to
focus only on growth. But ElectroCity is still competitive and addictive. That’s the trick.”

Schools that have registered to play ElectroCity become part of a competition: the student judged to have the best city overall wins $10,000 worth of HP technology equipment for their school. There is an online leader board for students to keep track of their town’s score and to compare their rating with other towns.

Above the smug Chris Hunter, Judi Lewis and Tom Markham who I will blame my non-productive weekend on. You guys owe me 48 hours!