In order to encourage post-pandemic tourism, the government of Italy has released its own puzzle-solving adventure game for mobile devices.
You might think that a country boasting the best food in the world, a sunny climate, stunning scenery and a celebrated ancient culture wouldn’t particularly need to advertise itself to tourists – but that’s exactly what the Italian Government has decided to do, via the medium of a mobile game.
Named Italy: Land of Wonder, the game casts you as an assistant to a lighthouse keeper named Elio, who needs 20 sparks from the 20 regions of Italy in order to make the sun shine again. In your quest you will meet five guardians who help you discover treasures related to Italian nature, cuisine, art, performance, and design, and through 100 puzzle levels based on the country’s landmarks, you will retrieve those all-important sparks.
Explaining the release of this product, Ambassador Lorenzo Angeloni said that “today, the mobile gaming market is one of the main channels for the diffusion of every type of content, including cultural and informative topics… it is our objective to engage people from all over the world and to get them interested in our country and its beauties, creating a sense of familiarity that can guide them, one day, to the actual discovery of our territories and our products.”
Perhaps the British government will soon follow this lead and release a game proclaiming our cultural heritage of greasy sausage rolls, incessant rain, and penalty shoot-out failures – though it might not prove to be quite as popular with a worldwide audience.
Italy: Land of Wonders is targeted at both children and adults, and is available to download for free in eleven different languages from July 19 on iOS, or from the Google Play Store at an as-yet unspecified later date.
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