In South Africa and globally, underage drinking is a crisis. Aware.org, the country’s leading advocate for harm reduction and responsible alcohol use, needed a fresh way to reach young people with its #NOtoUnder18 message - aimed at reducing national underage drinking from 32% to 20% by 2028.
Public health campaigns often struggle to connect with youth audiences, especially in a digital world where attention is fleeting and traditional messaging is easily ignored. So we set out to take a different approach.
Our objective was to create an experience that would meet young people where they are and deliver Aware.org's message in a tone and format that they would engage with willingly. The goal was simple but ambitious: transform underage drinking education from something youth avoid into something they seek out, play, and remember.
In collaboration with Sea Monster, Aware.org set out to build a story-driven, interactive game on Roblox that positioned youth as active participants in a world shaped by risky choices, rather than passive recipients of a message.
By leveraging the popularity of the Roblox platform, our aim was to reach as many young people as possible through the game. The goal was to build a campaign native to the platform, not just a branded takeover, but a story-driven experience that felt organic, entertaining and emotionally resonant.
To deliver meaningful underage drinking education to a hard-to-reach audience, we knew we couldn’t rely on traditional channels or messaging formats. As an always-on platform where South African youth already spend hours each day playing, socialising, and exploring, Roblox was chosen as our activation platform.
To promote the goal of reaching as many young people as possible, the RoVille Rescue: Lost Items #MakersOfTomorrow Challenge was deployed as a limited-time, pop-up experience within a popular Roblox title, RoVille. This allowed us to leverage an existing audience and maximise visibility without requiring players to leave a space they already loved and trusted.
The game dropped players into the aftermath of a house party gone wrong, where they were tasked with helping five characters recover missing items tied to poor decisions made the night before. Each mission focused on a different outcome of underage drinking - memory loss, impaired coordination, emotional fallout, broken friendships, and bad judgement - without ever mentioning alcohol directly, in line with Roblox’s community guidelines.
Through interconnected missions and emotionally grounded character arcs, players explored the consequences of that night. This shifted behaviour messaging from rule-based to empathy-based, empowering players to make better decisions by understanding, firsthand, the impact of poor ones.
The design challenge was significant: how do you explore serious consequences in a way that feels safe and age-appropriate, without being preachy or boring? We solved this through immersive storytelling, custom-built environments, and platform-native game mechanics. Play was also motivated through UGC Roblox rewards - limited-edition Aware.org backpack, available to the first 5,000 players to complete the game - which helped to create organic hype and extended the campaign visibility across the Roblox platform. Social proof through avatar customisation additionally gave players a sense of pride in participating and encouraged others to join.
To support the launch of the game and promote awareness, we collaborated with local Roblox influencers and TikTok creators to amplify the message beyond the platform. Their livestreams and short-form content added new authentic voices to the campaign, driving engagement from players who may not have otherwise discovered the experience.
By blending immersive design, platform fluency, and emotional storytelling, the RoVille Rescue: Lost Items #MakersOfTomorrow Challenge proved that critical digital education can be compelling, creative, and fun.
Within just four weeks, the RoVille Rescue: Lost Items #MakersOfTomorrow Challenge exceeded expectations, both in terms of reach and resonance.
The game was visited by 110,182 unique players - a testament to its seamless integration into RoVille and its appeal to a youth audience that is notoriously difficult to engage.
More than 79,000 players completed the full five-part challenge, indicating not just curiosity but sustained attention and meaningful interaction with the content.
In total, players spent 7,548 hours immersed in the game, navigating the emotional and social consequences of risky decisions in a virtual environment designed for learning through play.
All 5,000 limited-edition UGC backpack rewards were claimed within 24 hours of launch - an early indicator of the campaign’s viral potential and cultural traction.
Most importantly, the experience gave young players agency, instead of being told what not to do, they were given space to reflect, empathise, and internalise the impact of poor decision-making. In doing so, the campaign shifted underage drinking education from a rule-based approach to one of emotional engagement, making the issue not only visible, but truly memorable
