Get Water! is a mobile story-driven, gesture controlled, endless runner-game developed for World Water Day 2013. It focuses on its protagonist Maya, an Indian teenage girl who gets pulled out of school to fetch clean water for her family. The purpose of Get Water! is to raise awareness of water scarcity and how it directly affects girls’ education.
The player’s goal is to help Maya collect water by guiding her through a 2D environment with many obstacles. The player controls Maya’s movements by drawing a line under her feet on which she can ‘surf’, reminiscent of early experimental touch-screen enabled gameplay. Tapping the screen releases a boomerang to fend off peacocks that try to break Maya’s water vessel. By progressing through the game, players unlock new chapters in Maya’s story and acquire new skills and supplies to make the task quicker and easier (which is a motivating gameplay element but partly defeats the game’s critical impetus). Through presenting a female protagonist, Get Water! can contribute to promoting gender equality.