Urstamm Akademie + Schattenwirtschaft

Challenge

Urstamm needed to teach Swiss SMEs CO₂ compensation and net-zero — not with PDFs, but with mechanics people actually finish. Alongside it, Operal wanted to push civic gaming further than anyone had: a whole city's nature as a playable world.

Approach

Two builds. The Urstamm Akademie is a gamified e-learning platform: content organised in modules and chapters with per-chapter completion states, flashcards, 30-question multiple-choice quizzes at a 60% pass threshold, a live progress bar, completion certificates, a glossary and a digital postcard feature — 55 content slugs in German, English, French and Italian. Schattenwirtschaft, Operal's civic game world, gives all 6,781 public trees of Zug an AI persona generated from the open city tree cadastre: scan the QR tag on the trunk, meet the tree in first person, collect stamps across a Pokédex-style passport gallery with secret badges, join factions (See-vs-Asphalt gangs, the sapling union), and tip into a transparent on-chain treasury on Base whose code-enforced rule allows exactly one expense: water for young street trees.

Outcome

The academy runs live as Urstamm's education platform; Schattenwirtschaft runs live as a public art/citizen-science game world in four languages, built on 6,781 real trees, 219 species and an estimated 362,128 m² of canopy — with a 176-year-old silver linden among its playable characters.