With the world currently battling a pandemic and isn’t in no mood for slowing down, social distancing is now becoming the norm. And it hasn’t been easy, especially if you are not directly affected by it. However, many celebrities, organizations, and famous personalities are taking upon themselves to teach us about its importance and keeping us engaged while at it. Luckily, Minecraft is one of them.

Their new simulator allows its gamers to experiment with different social distancing methods which can help them to protect villagers from other infected zombie villagers. Created by design and innovation company AKQA and Mojang, the Microsoft-owned Swedish developer, the game is available to download for free for its Java Edition. Hence, no console versions.

Initially formulated by AKQA, the idea was later presented to Mojang, and thereafter it was partnered up with sustainability group Heart17 and the UNDP. Before the release, Mojang disclosed that it would partner with 2 organizations to help teach people about social distancing, using Minecraft.

Joseph, co-creator of Blockdown explains, “We felt compelled to use our skills to make social distancing models accessible to everyone, especially younger audiences who might be confused about the new reality we are living. As a partner to Mojang and Heart17, we felt this was a fertile ground to speak about this issue to new audiences.”

You can play the ‘Blockdown’ simulator either as an observer or a nurse. The game has two levels and there are three possible lockdown scenarios: free-for-all, Quarantine, and full lockdown. The first level consists of a village and a tower that has various mechanisms to mimic the inception of a virus. Their official blog post states: “By toggling between different variables in the control tower, players can observe how quickly Villagers can turn into Zombie Villagers.” Another level includes a hospital used to cure the Villagers. It even has a ZICU, short for Zombie Intensive Care Unit.

Hugo Barnes, another Co-Creator describes the levels adding, “We really wanted to make this to make a stark contrast between the society level and the hospital level, and also the nice parallel between how every society is held up by its healthcare system. So, we kind of wanted to bake that observation into the map itself.

Setting an example, the agency didn’t put any form of publicity to promote the map so as to avoid being noticed as making capital out of the situation and added that they didn’t want it to be like a corporate move.

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