Visitors at the Malta pavilion in Milan Expo 2015 are being encouraged to play an interactive game where they have to navigate a yellow bus around the island circumventing potholes along the way.

This game – aptly called Avoid Potholes! – has caused a stir among Maltese visitors who described it as “a joke in bad taste” and said they could not believe what they were seeing at the prestigious fair. “The game was actually promoting potholes, like they’re some quaint feature of Malta,” one Maltese visitor said.

Another said: “We slowly walked out with our faces red and our national identity challenged. These are truly dark times for Maltese culture and art.”

However, Antoinette Catania, deputy commissioner general of Malta for the Milan 2015 Expo, defended the game. It looks “at the lighter side of life” and the idea and programming of the pothole game was undertaken by students from the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology, together with their senior lecturers, she said.

“Apart from looking at the lighter side, the scope of the game is not simply to avoid potholes; it takes ‘players’ on a tour around Malta with highlights on diverse locations,” Ms Catania said.

Ironically, the theme of the pavilion is: ‘Derived from the past, preserved for the future’.

One of the disappointed visitors promptly expressed hope that the theme was not some sort of prediction. “I hope they are not referring to potholes,” she said.