15 Minute Santa

15 Minute Santa is a fun new arcade game which requires you to deliver Christmas presents to the children of Seattle by guiding Santa around the city on an interactive map. The game can be downloaded to play on Windows, Mac or Linux. It can now also be played on-line.

The object of 15 Minute Santa is to drive Santa around Seattle. As you navigate around the map of the city you earn points based on the density of the housing that you pass (because the higher the density the more presents you are delivering). Santa's sleigh only has so much fuel so you also need to occasionally refuel. You can do this by simply driving past a store on the map.

While 15 Minute Santa is a fun game to play it also has a more serious point to make. During the game you can only refuel at shops which sell food and drink.This means that you can run into trouble in neighborhoods which could be classed as food deserts. A food desert is usually defined as an urban area where it is difficult to access affordable fresh food. These can often be found in areas with low average incomes. 

Playing 15 Minute Santa can help to draw attention to areas with poor access to food and drink in Seattle. If you want to draw attention to food deserts in other cities it is possible to mod the game using data from OpenStreetMap (although this is really only possible on the downloaded versions of the game).

Via: weeklyOSM