Developing an animated interactive digital game in relevance to intangible cultural heritage with Shona as a vehicle

Abstract

Since animation comes in 2D and 3D graphics, a lot of motion techniques are used to make them into a reality of significant quality picture. The thesis sought to prove the benefit that an interactive digital game has on the transference of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and to show that a country can preserve a lot of value when its people maintain their identity through playing the game. Important knowledge has been lost because of the increased pace of old people dying with their knowledge and not prioritizing cultural knowledge transference. The younger generations appear too preoccupied with other things, in particular digital gadgets and works, rather than sitting in moonlit meetings and receiving wisdom from the older generation. The reason the historical artifacts, representations and instruments are not being passed down with the knowledge they contain is primarily that the ways of passing down knowledge are tedious to today's younger generation. The development of Nzanga interactive digital game has been in this study used as a strategy to revive the interest of young people in the living heritage and related morals and practical skills that can be useful for their livelihoods. The computer tools used to develop the digital game are namely Android Studio 2021, Blender 3.0, FL Studio 20.8, Genymotion 2022, GIMP 2.10, Inkscape 1.0, NetBeans 12.6, Unity Hub 3.0.1 and Unreal Engine 4. The Nzanga game brings about knowledge of all three selected ICH attributes through answering game questions. The game includes two traditional games which are Pada and Tsoro which bring back that traditional vibe of game play. As the children play the game, they gain ICH knowledge of the Hurungwe Korekore people with the Chundu story as a background of the Nzanga game, thus achieving all the objectives of this thesis. The main objective is the creation of a game that is very entertaining which revives the ICH of Hurungwe Korekore culture with localized background and language. The target group were children between the ages of 13 and 16 years, four peri-urban secondary schools and fourteen rural secondary schools with an estimation of one hundred students. Life cycle models were chosen for the digital games’ development process based on the combination of a game being software and a game being multimedia. Some of the reults after the game testing included children getting more ICH questions correctly, increased number in the children who liked playing digital games and increased hours spent on playing digital games. 4 The Nzanga interactive digital game serves as the main instrument which acts as a medium bridging the older generation's intangible cultural heritage knowledge and the younger on