Green Media Mediography – Utrecht University

Future Energy

Future Energy, designed by Emanuele Ornella and published by Queen Games, is officially part of Queen Games’ Green Planet series, a line of games explicitly dedicated to themes of sustainability and ecological transformation. In most traditional resource-management games, players build factories on blank spaces or ‘extract’ resources from the in-game environment. Future Energy presents a

Canopy: Evergreen

While its predecessor, Canopy, focused on the lush, dense tropical rainforest, Evergreen shifts the focus to a temperate forest ecosystem. In a functioning ecosystem, plants and animals rely on each other to survive and reproduce. Evergreen models the interdependence of trophic levels via a mechanical pairing system between the forest habitat and its wildlife. Players

Circular City – the board game

Conceived and developed through a cross-border partnership between the municipality of Prato (Italy), the municipality of Taichung (Taiwan), and ARCO (Action Research for Co-Development) at the University of Florence, “Circular City – the board game” is an educational, non-profit serious game designed to model the real-world complexities of transitioning toward a sustainable future. Rather than

Darkwood

Darkwood can be classified as an eco-horror game; while most survival games feed into an anthropocentric fantasy, dropping the player into the wilderness to chop down trees, exploit resources, and build a ‘fortress’, Darkwood rejects this gameplay framework. It presents a human-nature relationship where nature is not a passive backdrop to be exploited, but an

Habitactics

Habitactics is a ‘serious’ educational puzzle game developed by Zachtronics as part of the Amplify digital curriculum (https://amplify.com/). Rather than adopting Zachtronics’ traditional complex engineering or programming mechanics, for which the developer has accumulated a ‘cult following’, Habitactics uses a modified Match-3 puzzle mechanic to model trophic levels, food webs, and ecosystem stability. The game

Beyond Blue

Developed by E-Line Media, the creators behind Never Alone in partnership with BBC Studios, Beyond Blue (2020) draws heavy inspiration from the footage and eco-philosophies of Blue Planet II. The game frames its environmental representation through a near-future narrative starring Mirai, a deep-sea biologist leading a small, high-tech research team. Beyond Blue presents a relationship

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

“My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future”. The British filmmaker and naturalist, David Attenborough, has devoted his career to educating people about nature and, more recently, the climate crisis. The 2020 documentary David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet weights in on the climate crisis by aiming to subvert the traditional nature documentary

Reduce, Reuse, Revolt

From the itch.io website: “The news doesn’t even mention it anymore. The rising temperatures, mass migrations, dirty water, acid rain–none of it. It’s all bought and paid for by corporations, those entities which press down upon the people, grinding them into the pavement until nothing but a husk is left. Everyone is angry, sick, and

Ecology: The Game of Man and Nature

From the Science History Institute website: “Ecology: The Game of Man and Nature was published in 1970 by Urban Systems, a consulting and research firm, whose president, Richard H. Rosen, was an ecologist and environmental engineer. While teaching undergraduate air pollution classes at Harvard, Rosen produced a number of anti-pollution board games for educational purposes.

Minecraft (Dynamic Life Mod)

This mod for Minecraft, shared for free via Planet Minecraft and as a paid premium version via Patreon, explores how plants in Minecraft could grow, reproduce, die, and interact with other species in complex, emergent ways. The datapack aims to transform the Minecraft world into a living ecosystem with dynamic, shifting biomes in which players,

Minecraft – Minecraft Ecology Mod

The Minecraft Ecology Mod simulates environmental and ecological phenomena by turning the player’s core survival behavior into an active driver of pollution, which then triggers realistic environmental feedback loops. Rather than treating the environment as the usual infinite, consequence-free resource sandbox, the mod tracks pollution dynamically across the map, forcing players to think about their

Trash Goblin

Trash Goblin is a cozy shop-keeping simulation game in which the protagonist is a little goblin running a trinket shop by uncovering, restoring, and selling unique items to oddball customers. It is set in a fantastical city scenario and players receive items from a friendly miner, whose license they can progress and upgrade over time.

Get Water!

Get Water! is a mobile story-driven, gesture controlled, endless runner-game developed for World Water Day 2013. It focuses on its protagonist Maya, an Indian teenage girl who gets pulled out of school to fetch clean water for her family. The purpose of Get Water! is to raise awareness of water scarcity and how it directly

SimCity BuildIt

SimCity BuildIt is a city-building simulation and strategy game. This mobile game is the latest version of the SimCity franchise. The game challeges users to build their own city that gets more and more complicated. Playes need keep citizens happy and, therefore, need to reduce pollution and build parks for example. Environmental motifs are woven

Immergency AR

Sliced Bread Animation, together with the Immergency team, created a collaborative game in AR that educates players on climate change policies, and the importance of working together to reduce carbon emissions as part of a XR competition. The game works as a virtual ‘escape room’, in which players go through a series of puzzles and

World of Warcraft (Ecological Succession activity)

“Ecological Succession” is a four-week-long activity during which players populate the Oasis with species from Azeroth, help these species thrive through storylines and daily quests, recruit three experts to assist in ecosystem management and earn pets, mounts, and achievements as rewards. This new world activity introduced in Patch 11.2 lets players collaborate with Ve’nari and

Last War (Greenification Mechanic in Season 3)

Greenification is the core mechanic for revealing Desert Artifacts in Season 3 of the mobile strategy game Last War. It is possible to greenify map tiles starting from day 3 of week 1 as soon as a city gets captured; captured cities will be surrounded by green tiles and selecting any location adjacent to those

Botany

As Victorian-era plant hunters, players travel the world in search of rare specimens to bring back to their estates. The game draws on a period of scientific curiosity and exploration, presenting nature as both fascinating and demanding, encountered through journeys and careful handling rather than simple collection. At its core is a system of expedition

Forest Shuffle

Over the course of the game, each player grows a forest by placing different tree species and arranging other plants, animals, and fungi around them. The game ends once three “winter” cards are drawn, signifying the end of the growing season. At that point, the most ecologically “successful” forest wins. At the core, Forest

Mythwind

In the board game Mythwind, 1–4 players take on the roles of settlers arriving in a quiet, magical valley, working together to establish a new town within an already living and enchanted landscape. Rather than conquering or reshaping this environment, players gradually learn to live in it by building relationships with its inhabitants and adapting

Earth Rising: 20 Years to Transform Our World

Earth Rising: 20 Years to Transform Our World is a cooperativeCooperation This is a dummy entry about cooperation. board game for 1 to 6 players. Each player takes on a role such as activist, scientist, politician, or innovator, working together to achieve sustainability before time runs out. The game lasts for twenty rounds, each representing

New Angeles

New Angeles, set in the Android universe, is a bustling industrial hub that depends on constant resource extraction and distribution to function. Each player controls a megacorporation, competing to earn more wealth than their opponents. But they must also cooperate to keep the city stable. If unrest, infrastructure problems, or resource shortages cause the city

Flourish

Players design and cultivate a personal garden over the course of four rounds of play, gradually building a tableau of flower beds, trees, ornamental features, and bee hives that form a flourishing ecosystem with each other, but also with their neighbours’ gardens. Each player scores points from the combinations of plants and landscape elements they

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