Silverbackers

Project

Silverbackers is a free mobile phone game that teaches players about the threats facing mountain gorillas in Central Africa, where fewer than 700 individuals survive in the wild. Built for basic Java (J2ME) handsets as an eight-level adventure puzzle game, it highlights how demand for coltan, a mineral used in mobile phone production found beneath the gorillas’ forest habitat in the Democratic Republic of Congo, drives the habitat loss and conflict that endanger the species, turning the very technology it runs on into part of the story it tells.