The Edge of Water

BigMood’s indie adventure The Edge of Water avoids mechanics of environmental exploitation for gameplay systems built around stewardship, multi-species kinship, and ecological harmony. The game works most visibly by defamiliarizing our relationship with water and marine life, offering a serene but also notably romanticized experience of human-nature relations. The game’s lore states that long ago,

Machine Dreams: Rainforest

Refik Anadol’s Machine Dreams: Rainforest, the headlining debut exhibition at Anadol’s Los Angeles museum Dataland, is a highly ambitious attempt at using AI and immersive projection techniques in the service of sustainability and climate communication. The exhibit aims to prove to skeptics that machine learning can offer something radically different from generic ‘slop’ by dedicating

Mulaka

Developed by the Mexican studio Lienzo, Mulaka is a 3D action-adventure game that focuses on Indigenous storytelling. Set in a poly-poly rendition of the landscapes of northern Mexico, the game draws from the mythology, culture, and worldview of the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) people. While players might approach it as a Zelda-inspired action game, Mulaka uses mechanics,

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