The Rhino Game

The Rhino Game, a point and click game for Windows, describes the plight of the northern white rhino. This critically endangered rhino’s population is so small it is unlikely to avoid extinction. You’re a crime reporter for a newspaper in Beijing planning a series of articles on the smuggling of poached rhino horn. You hope the articles will persuade governments to end rhino poaching before northern white rhinos become extinct. You begin your research for the articles by finding ways to contact smugglers. The smugglers confirm that rhino horn sold in China is from critically endangered northern white rhino killed by poachers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The horn is smuggled to China through ports in Sudan. You make travel plans based on your editor’s promise you can go to Africa to investigate the poaching and smuggling if your travel plans won’t make smugglers aware of your purpose. When you’ve completed your travel plans, you apply for a visa to Sudan. You must think of a reason for your visit acceptable to Sudan’s government. You hire guides and rent trucks, horses, and donkeys in southern Sudan. On your way to Garamba National Park in Congo to document the activities of rhino poachers you may be attacked by rebel militia, your trucks may be stuck in mud or break down or be stolen, or elephants may charge your convoy. In Garamba, you may encounter hostile rhino horn poachers, suspicious park rangers, inquisitive European TV crews, cruel wildlife smugglers, greedy bush meat traders, angry elephants and hippos, and indigenous peoples whose lives have been ravaged by war. You could be attacked by elephants in musth or rhinos protecting their young, find yourself in a river with angry hippos, try to rescue a rhino from a minefield, try to hide from, or even shoot down, spotter planes, or witness a fight between a rhino and an elephant. You or your guides might suffer tropical diseases or your donkeys and horses could become ill. If things go really wrong, you’ll have to leave as quickly as possible! You try to smuggle any rhino horn you obtain through Sudan to China. You must choose to either pay bribes or risk losing your horn to bandits and smugglers. If the horn reaches China and isn’t found in customs and police checks, you compare its DNA to that of rhino horn you found in Beijing. If the DNA matches, it will prove horn from critically endangered rhinos is smuggled from Congo to China. You’ll add this to other evidence - such as names of smugglers and your count of rhinos – which might persuade the world community to save the northern white rhino. There is an illustrated glossary (more like an encyclopaedia). The game is suitable for middle school or older players, or anyone interested in environmental issues, especially those related to endangered species.