Boats v Bots was created in 2026 by visual artist and educator Jacqui Harrison to illustrate her fears over the unsustainable proliferation of digital technology in our lives and the increasing suspicion that it is reducing our ability to think critically.
The design and aesthetic of the game is intentionally low-fi in order to reflect nostalgia for the innocence of the Y2K era, a time when the internet was about creating, connecting and sharing, rather than lining the pockets of tech broligarchs.
It was produced on a low cost Raspberry Pi 5 computer using the free online software Scratch. A Raspberry Pi is a tiny, single-board computer that was developed in the UK in order to inspire interest in programming amongst schoolchildren. Scratch also was established as an educational tool and is a simple, block-based, visual programming language that makes coding fun and accessible for young people of all ages.
The game uses the UK's canal system, the network of waterways that was built during the Industrial Revolution to transport goods as an analogy for the internet, the information superhighway that was invented to transport data and was a catalyst for the fourth, so-called Technological Revolution.
It also works as a portrait of the ever-changing nature of the post-industrial British landscape and is a love letter to the alternative world of the canal, where it is still possible to live a simpler and quieter life and exist both offline and off grid.