NEWS RELEASE

Copenhagen, 25 August 2005

Free pc game on environment in 26 languages

Gamers all over Europe can now play a pc game and learn about the environment at the same time. The European Environment Agency in Copenhagen has launched the Honoloko pc game in 26 languages. The game is available on the internet and free to use.

Honoloko is designed as a board game. While moving around on an island, the player is continuously asked questions concerning his or her environmental behaviour. Points are awarded depending on the choices made by the player. The game is targeted at the age range 8 to 12. The objective is to raise awareness and promote a change in behaviour. Earlier this year the EEA launched a multilingual Kids' Zone with environmental information on its website.

"In addition to hosting the game ourselves, we are also offering it to environmental bodies and organisations who would like to integrate it as a part of their website", says EEA Executive Director Professor Jacqueline McGlade. "In the long-term, we hope that Honoloko will inspire private games developers to integrate environmental issues into their commercial pc-games".

The Honoloko game is available in the official EU languages plus Bulgarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Romanian, Russian and Turkish. It was developed jointly by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe and the European Environment Agency.

The idea of both the game and Kids-Zone on the website is to demonstrate that there are relations between environment and health, especially for children. It also shows how seemingly small, individual behavioural changes can have a major impact at European level.

The central feature of Kids' Zone is the Eco-Agent. The visitor is invited to become an Eco-Agent. They are then sent out on missions within the areas: chemicals, transport, water, air and climate change. The visitor starts out as an agent-trainee and must gather knowledge and pass tests to finally become a fully fledged Eco-Agent. They can then compare themselves with other agents. The agent can pass tests to raise his/her score - as compared to the other Eco-Agents.

Visit Honoloko at http://www.honoloko.com and Kids' Zone of the EEA website at: http://ecoagents.eea.europa.eu.

About the EEA

The European Environment Agency is the leading public body in Europe dedicated to providing sound, independent information on the environment to policy-makers and the public. Operational in Copenhagen since 1994, the EEA is the hub of the European environment information and observation network (Eionet), a network of around 300 bodies across Europe through which it collects and disseminates environment-related data and information. An EU body, the Agency is open to all nations that share its objectives. It currently has 31 member countries: the 25 EU Member States, three EU candidate countries -- Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey -- and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. A membership agreement has been initialled with Switzerland. The West Balkan states -- Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro -- have applied for membership of the Agency.