Combining technology, environmental awareness, and Afro-Brazilian heritage, the digital game Odoyá – A limpeza dos Mares (Odoyá – Cleaning the Seas) transforms the myth of the Queen of the Sea into an interactive environmental education experience, the result of a partnership between Naturabit and LabCoco, the Technology and Citizen Innovation Laboratory at the Coco de Umbigada Cultural Center in Olinda.
In this 2D single-player game, the character Yemanjá—a Black mermaid with a blue-green tail—tackles pollution on Olinda’s beach. The narrative is based on a tale in which the deity, enraged by the trash dumped into the sea, receives from Olodumare the power to return all human waste to the sand. The gameplay challenges the player to collect trash such as plastic bottles, bags, and cans and dodge tires—items commonly found on local beaches—while local wildlife moves through the scene.
The initiative is part of the Contos de Ifá program, a LabCoco initiative that functions as a laboratory for civic innovation by developing games based on Afro-Brazilian mythology and the oral traditions of traditional terreiro communities, transforming ancestral knowledge into a key to contemporary social debate. For Naturabit, which centers its work on the symbiosis between technology and the natural sciences, the project embodies its quest for smart solutions in the fields of education and design, demonstrating how the complexity of nature and cultural richness can inspire digital products with a regenerative purpose.
