With 450 questions, real cartographic foundations, environmental missions and a shared world for up to 64 players, Azores Game wants people to do more than play. Creator César Couto hopes they will leave the screen curious enough to look differently at the real archipelago.
What if discovering the Azores began not with an airline ticket, but with a boat moving across a digital Atlantic? What if a child could sail toward São Jorge carrying cheese, encounter a shearwater in difficulty, visit Furnas, join a regatta or learn why one island celebrates differently from another? This is the idea behind Azores Game, an experimental project created by César Couto, founder of Waka WebStudio, that attempts to transform the geography, nature and culture of the archipelago into an interactive world accessible through an ordinary web browser. Pasted text
The project emerged, Couto explains, from the meeting of three interests: design, programming and the Azorean territory. Rather than simply placing information about the islands on a screen, he wanted to turn knowledge into experience. Players choose destinations, cross the sea, arrive on different islands, recognize species and participate in activities associated with particular places. The ocean is therefore not empty space between levels. It is part of the game because it is part of Azorean identity—a geography of distance and proximity, isolation and encounter. “Azores Game was born with the desire to understand how far we can take this relationship between playing and knowing a territory,” Couto says. Pasted text
Considerable technology lies beneath that apparently simple experience. Island contours are derived from official CAOP 2024 cartography, complemented by elevation and lagoon data and transformed into three-dimensional navigable geography. The challenge has been to remain recognizable without reproducing distances so literally that the game becomes cumbersome. Coastlines must correspond to navigational boundaries, lagoons must fit the terrain, shadows and objects must render efficiently, and everything must work in real time even on mobile devices. The game can be entered as a guest, operates in Portuguese and English and adapts its controls to computers, tablets and phones. Pasted text
But technology serves a larger educational ambition. The game contains 450 questions covering the geography, history and culture of the nine islands, alongside a field diary where players can revisit what they have discovered. Environmental awareness is incorporated into play through activities inspired by real conservation efforts such as SOS Cagarro and sea-turtle rescue. A player may learn why juvenile Cory’s shearwaters become disoriented by artificial lighting or encounter the consequences of marine debris. Cetacean observation requires slowing down rather than speeding up. Couto’s intention is significant: conservation should not appear merely as information to memorize, but as behavior to practice. Saving an animal matters, he argues, but understanding what placed it in danger extends responsibility much further. Pasted text
The same principle guides the representation of Azorean culture. Holy Spirit celebrations, flower carpets, maritime festivities, local foods and products are translated into activities rather than simply displayed as decorative symbols. Research draws upon identifiable documentary and cartographic sources, while Couto recognizes that authenticity requires continuing dialogue with people who know local traditions intimately. A delivery of São Jorge cheese, for example, can become a lesson about origin and inter-island circulation; a festival can introduce concepts of collective work, offering and community. The aim is not to make nine islands appear culturally identical, but precisely to reveal their differences. Pasted text
Azores Game is also becoming a social space. Its shared world can accommodate up to 64 captains simultaneously, while flotillas can bring together groups of up to five players. Recent additions include cetacean-watching excursions with passengers, photography and postcards, messages in bottles and information connecting the digital world with real events taking place in the islands. The project remains experimental, with future development intended to deepen the individuality of each island, improve mobile performance and create more natural connections among activities. Pasted text
Perhaps its most interesting possibility, however, lies outside the game itself. Couto hopes a question might lead a child to ask a grandparent about a tradition; that encountering a cagarro digitally might make someone notice the real bird differently; or that sailing between Pico and Faial might make the geography of the channel more understandable. “If, after playing, someone looks for more information about an island, pays different attention to a cagarro or better understands a local festival,” he says, “the experience will already have fulfilled an important part of its purpose.” Pasted text
The Azores have always required navigation to be understood. Azores Game simply proposes another kind of vessel—one built from maps, mathematics, pixels and curiosity. The screen may be digital. The destination remains unmistakably real.
Based on an interview by Diogo Simões Pires in Correio dos Açores – Natlaino Viveiros, director, The image is also from CA.