Environmental Games

Real data about the place you actually live

Type in a ZIP code and each of these games rebuilds itself around that neighborhood, using the same public scientific datasets that researchers and government agencies use. Nothing is invented for effect: if the data for your town is undramatic, the game tells you so. Every game finishes with something you can do outdoors.

Free, no account, and nothing you enter leaves your device.

Storm Drain Detective mid-trace: a blue flowline running south from the centre of ZIP 90703 in Cerritos, California, past two numbered USGS gauges to a red marker where the trace ends.
Trace

Storm Drain Detective

Guess where the water on your street ends up, then watch the real answer draw itself. Uses the U.S. Geological Survey’s river network to follow your nearest waterway downstream, naming the real gauges it passes and the real place it reaches the sea.

Age Range:
Grades 5-12
Learning Topics:
WatershedsOcean PollutionLitter
Live data from: USGS Hydro Network
Play Storm Drain Detective →
Backyard Bioblitz on round 1 of 10: a photograph of a Western Fence Lizard recorded near Cerritos, California, its iNaturalist credit line beneath it, and four reptile names to choose from.
Identify

Backyard Bioblitz

Every photo is a real plant or animal that somebody actually recorded near your ZIP code. Learn to tell them apart, find out how often each one has been seen where you live, and print a bingo card of species you can genuinely go out and find.

Age Range:
Grades 3-12
Learning Topics:
BiodiversitySpecies IDCommunity Science
Live data from: iNaturalist
Play Backyard Bioblitz →
Air Detective’s evidence board: four panels of real PM2.5 and ozone readings for Cerritos, California, with the 24 February spike picked out against the surrounding week.
Deduce

Air Detective

Real hourly pollution data from your own area, with the cause hidden. Read the clues — which pollutant moved, what time of day, what season — and work out what happened. Sometimes the honest answer is that the evidence is not strong enough, and saying so scores full marks.

Age Range:
Grades 6-12
Learning Topics:
Air QualityUrban HeatEvidence
Live data from: Copernicus / Open-Meteo
Play Air Detective →
Your Climate Record’s result screen: average daily high in Cerritos, California by decade from the 1950s to the 2020s, with the 1950s and 2016-2025 averages drawn in and a +0.75 degrees Fahrenheit caption.
Predict

Your Climate Record

Commit to a guess about your own town before you see anything: how much warmer is it than the 1950s, and how many more hot days? Then meet the real 75-year record. You are scored on how close your guess was — not on how alarming the answer is.

Age Range:
Grades 6-12
Learning Topics:
ClimateSignal vs. NoiseLocal Data
Live data from: Open-Meteo Reanalysis
Play Your Climate Record →

Those four pictures are real screenshots of the games running, not mockups. Each one shows Cerritos, California — EcoQuest’s own city — because a screenshot can only show one place. Enter your ZIP code and you will see the same screens drawn from your town’s data instead.

The Backyard Bioblitz card shows a photograph © Steven Kurniawidjaja, some rights reserved, used under CC BY-NC 4.0 and shown cropped — via iNaturalist.

How These Games Work

Built Around Your ZIP

The species, the river, the air and the weather are all pulled for the place you enter — not a generic example.

Real Public Science

Every game names its data source on the page, and says plainly when a reading is a model estimate rather than a ground measurement.

Ends Outdoors

Each game finishes with a real task, a printable sheet for classrooms, and a way to contribute observations that scientists actually use.

See Upcoming EcoQuest Events →