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Not least due to the increasing digitalisation of our everyday life in recent years, the amount of information on all topics of life has increased noticeably. Regardless of the time of day and place, countless amounts of information on health-related questions and concerns can be found within a few minutes. The amount of health-related information is accompanied by an increasing heterogeneity in terms of quality, because in addition to good and technically correct health information, there is a large amount of information whose content is unclear, doubtful or incorrect.

In this context, health literacy is becoming increasingly important. This is understood as the individual ability and motivation to find health-related information, to understand it, to critically and reflectively assess it and to use it appropriately in everyday life with the aim of promoting, maintaining or restoring one's own health as well as the health of others (Sørensen et al., 2012). Current representative findings indicate that more than half (58.8%) of the adult population (18+) have difficulties in finding and dealing with health-related information (Schaeffer et al., 2021). Health literacy should be promoted as early as possible in the life course, i.e. already in adolescence, since knowledge, attitudes and health-related skills are already developed and consolidated here.

The eHLastic project aims to digitally support the health literacy of adolescents and young adults. To this end, an app called Nebolus was developed to help young people strengthen their (navigational) health literacy, i.e. their ability to find, understand, evaluate and apply health-related information, services and actors in their social space. In order to make this possible, Nebolus is intended to enable low-threshold familiarisation with health-related actors and services in the place of residence (e.g. district, city). Through playful interaction with the actors, Nebolus aims to help break down barriers to using the municipal help and support services and thus increase the use of the services.

Nebolus is based on the idea of a rally in the local neighbourhood that leads young people through a district/city on the basis of an exciting story and brings them into low-threshold contact with health-related help and support services. Against the background of the concepts of gamification and serious games (Dadaczynski & Tolks, 2018; Tolks et al. 2020), which are also increasingly used in the field of health promotion and prevention, Nebolus makes use of various game mechanics. In addition to promoting the immersion experience through the use of a story, tasks, exploration elements (stations), achievements (badges) and visual progress indicators are used. Research findings in the past have shown that the use of playful elements increases the motivation to participate and enables low-threshold and incidental learning experiences (Dadaczynski, Schiemann & Paulus, 2016).