Green Media Mediography – Utrecht University

Lumino City

Lumino City is a BAFTA award-winning puzzle game that addresses the topic of renewable energy. The game represents renewable energy as a functional necessity within the gameplay. To progress, the player must learn how natural forces like wind, water and the sun can be harnessed to power a small community. For example, in one early

Sustainability City (Minecraft Education)

The lesson pack “Sustainability City” for Minecraft Education frames sustainability as a process integrating elements like urban planning, consumer behavior, and responsible resource management. It does not fucs only on environmental protection, but on enhancing economic modes of production and quality of life by reducing waste and using renewable energy.The mod breaks down sustainability into

Compost Pests and Cultivation (Stardew Valley)

This mod adds three aspects to the game’s farming system that make both the in-game terrain (see Abraham 2024) and the representation of agriculture more realistic and immersive. 1) Pests like vegetable flies can infest the crops, which can then only be destroyed to prevent spreading. 2) Using the seed maker can give crops a

Civilization VI – Gathering Storm – Renewable Energies Complexity

JNR’s Renewable Energies Complexity frames the climate crisis in Civilization VI as a technological and infrastructure challenge rather than ‘just’ an environmental disaster. While the base game treats renewable energy as a late-game ‘fix’, this mod reframes them as a complex system requiring careful planning and early investment.In the base game, renewable improvements (like solar

JNR’s Climate Balance (Civilization VI)

JNR’s Climate Balance frames the climate crisis as a high-stakes, delayed-impact catastrophe rather than the relatively quick and comparatively easily manageable gameplay cycle in the original Civilization VI: Gathering Storm expansion. It shifts the focus from immediate consequences to hitting later in the game but disproportionately harder, i.e. the window for prevention is wider, but

Ruth’s Journey

Ruth’s Journey is a short narrative ecogame developed in the Netherlands by Nifty Llama. The game shifts the player’s focus toward observation and documentation of natural phenomena, with bird watching, the core game mechanic, framed as an ‘escape’ from oppressive work experience. The game utilizes photography as the primary interaction method with the environment (rather

Pokémon Pokopia

Pokémon Pokopia is perhaps the most explicit ‘environmental’ game in the franchise’s history, which makes it an interesting case study. Developed by Game Freak and Omega Force it pivots from the series’ traditional gameplay loop based on catching and battling Pokémon to a gameplay paradigm and corresponding story focused on restoration and rewilding. It has

Forestry

Work in Progress From the game’s website: “Forestry is a strategic Eurogame in which players act as forest stewards, balancing resource use with environmental care. Using a harvester and a manager, they fell and replant trees, build infrastructure, regulate water, process resources, and fulfill contracts—each choice shaping the forest’s health in a realistic, sustainability-focused challenge

Fe

In Fe, your objective is to save the environment from disbalance - teaching an important lesson in interconnectedness and new nature-relationships.

Kelp: Shark vs Octopus

Kelp is a two-player asymmetrical game that offers players a unique opportunity to delve into the natural world of Pyjama Sharks and Common Octopuses, set in a South African kelp forest. Hide and seek meets bluffing and manipulation. Deck builder meets dice bag builder. As players take on the roles of these iconic sea creatures, they

Mörk Borg

Pelle Nilsson. Art by Johan Nohr. Free League Publishing and the Stockholm Kartell, 2021. 1–5 players plus a Game Master | Variable | Adult Mörk Borg is a Swedish horror tabletop roleplaying game set in a dying world whose end is prophesied with absolute certainty by two-headed Basilisks whose utterances are peddled among the desperate for

Carbon City Zero

Carbon City Zero: World Edition is a collaborative deck-building game for 1-4 people (aged 8+), in which players develop a sustainable city by greening transport, transforming industries, getting citizens on board, and showing world leaders how it’s done. Each player starts with an identical deck, buying additional cards from a shared marketplace to create a

The Shivering Circle

Howard David Ingham. DriveThruRPG, 2018. 3–5 players including a Game Master | Variable | Adult The Shivering Circle is an independent tabletop roleplaying game by Howard David Ingham, available on a pay-what-you-want basis from DriveThruRPG. The game is set in and around the fictional Hoddesham Down, a composite of the British landscape’s half-remembered mythologies, with the

Keep Cool

With Keep Cool, each player takes a role within global climate politics. You have to put through economic interests – e.g., of the USA and its partners or of the Developing Countries – yet you must not forget the strong lobby groups in your country like the oil industry or environmental groups as they also decide

Happy Shoppers

Chloé Wake and Paul Wake (Frank and Alex Games). Self-published, 2024. Free to download. 3+ players | 20–40 minutes | Adult Happy Shoppers: A New and Most Disgusting Game for Consumers of All Ages is a free, print-and-play card game designed for the Fuck Capitalism Game Jam (2024), with a revised edition available to download from

The Miasma of Miswell Hill

TTRPG Scenario Chloé Germaine and James Louis Smith. The Gauntlet, 2022. Published in The Between Season 3. 3–5 players including a Game Master | 2–4 hours | Adult The Miasma of Miswell Hill is a scenario for The Between, Jason Cordova’s tabletop roleplaying game of Victorian monster-hunting published by the Gauntlet. In The Between, players

Catan

Klaus Teuber. Catan GmbH, 1995. 3–4 Players | 60-120 Mins | Age 10+ Catan, designed by Klaus Teuber, is a multiplayer game in which players compete to create the dominant settlement on the fictional island of Catan. Players compete for space and resources, and build roads, towns and cities until the island has been effectively

Renature

Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer. Art by Dennis Lohausen. Deep Print Games, 2020. 2-4 players | 45-60 minutes | Age 8+ Renature is a competitive board game where players plant trees in a national park to compete for points. There are various methods for collecting points: by planting trees which are an equal or larger

Wingspan

Elizabeth Hargrave. Art by Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, Greg May, Beth Sobel. Stonemaier Games, 2019. 1-5 players | 40-70 mins | Age 10+ Wingspan is an engine builder game in which players are bird enthusiasts who compete to build the best bird sanctuary within four rounds. Each player has their own personal board

Scythe

Jamey Stegmaier. Art by Jakub Rozalski. Stonemaier Games, 2016. 1-5 Players | 115 Minutes | Age 14+ Jamie Stegmaier’s Scythe is an engine-building game in which players take control of nations struggling to survive in 1920s ‘Europa’, a place riven by unrest caused by the Great War. The city-state known simply as “The Factory”, whose

Rustling Leaves

Paolo Mori. Art by Elli Jäger. Kosmos, 2020. 2-6 Players | 20 minutes | Age 8+ Rustling Leaves is a roll-and-write game set in a forest habitat with varying rules as the seasons – spring, summer, autumn, and winter – change. Each player will get a sheet of paper upon which a grid represents the

Planet

Urtis Šulinskas. Art by Sabrina Miramon. Blue Orange, 2018. 2-4 players | 30- 45 minutes | Age 8+ Planet is a tactile game in which players build their own individual world by selecting vibrantly coloured tiles containing different biomes: ocean, desert, mountain ranges, forest and glaciers. Each player also has an individual objective card and

They are Hollows of Desolation

Gordie Murphy. Art by Gordie Murphy. Itch.io, 2021. 1–5 players plus a Game Master | 2 hours+ | Adult They Are Hollows of Desolation is an independent tabletop roleplaying game designed by Gordie Murphy using the d6 Trophy storytelling system developed by Jesse Ross for the Gauntlet. During Hollows, players invent and explore a collapsing

Power Failure

Tao-Tao Chen, Yen-Lin Chen, Yu-Xuan Su and An-Qi Zheng. Art by Sy Li, Masha Tace, Will Meadows and Sarah Lafser. Artana, 2021. 2-4 players | 45 minutes | Age 14+ Power Failure is a card and dexterity game where players try to collect city cards which account for points at the end of the game.