Aquation is a free game offered by the the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The game, designed for students in upper elementary school or middle school, teaches students about the distribution of clean water and what can be done to balance global water resources. In the game students select a region to explore its current water supplies. Based on the information provided students take action in the form of building desalination plants, conducting further research, reacting to natural events, and attempting to move water between regions.

Aquation is available to play on Android devices, on iOS devices, and in your web browser (web browser requires Unity plugin).

Applications for Education
Aquation isn’t a fast-paced game so it probably won’t grab your students’ attention when they open it. But if you can push through the initial “blah” reaction from your students, the game contains some valuable lessons about the global distribution of freshwater resources and the challenges that face the regions that have less than others.