Green Media Mediography – Utrecht University

Climate Cooldown

Climate Cooldown is a cooperativeCooperation This is a dummy entry about cooperation. educational board game designed for 2–4 players (though the game is scalable for larger groups in classrooms). Over the course of up to five rounds, players must coordinate their actions to slash global emissions, build green energy grids, and heal damaged ecosystems before

Post Growth Toolkit: The Game

Developed by the art and research collective Disnovation.org, Post Growth Toolkit: The Game is a tactical intervention into how we conceptualize the climate crisis. Most commercial environmental simulation games like SimCity or more recent ‘green-tech’ city builders operate within a neoliberal framework, challenging players to optimize resources, deploy eco-friendly upgrades, and manage carbon metrics, all

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Eternagram

In order to measure individual propensity to climate communication, a team led by the City University of Hong Kong created a text-adventure game that allows players to explore a non-Earth world guided by a ChatGPT-based in-game character. The researchers collected in-game dialogues of players conversing freely with the character, and player choices from designed game

Earth 2053: Tipping Point

In the board game Earth 2053: Tipping Point, 1-4 players represent countries that work together to prevent a global climate catastrophe. The main scoring is based on a physical seesaw board where "prevention" tokens are placed on one side and "pollution" tokens on the other.

Terra Nil

Terra Nil is a reverse city builder about ecosystem reconstruction. Turn a barren wasteland into an ecological paradise complete with different flora and fauna.

Energy Czar

Energy Czar is an early educational simulation game where the president of the United States gives the player full power to guide the country through a 1980s energy crisis. The player has full control over eight energy resources: coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, hydroelectric power, solar power, wind power and biomass. It is possible to promote

Daybreak

Daybreak is a cooperativeCooperation This is a dummy entry about cooperation. board game that models technological, political and social responses to climate change. It was designed by Pandemic creator Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace. Throughout the game, the Earth’s temperature begins to rise. Simultaneously, players must contend with crisis events, such as droughts, wildfires, rising

ARMA 3

Arma 3 is an open world tactical shooter developed and published by Bohemia Interactive exclusively through Steam. It is the third main entry in the Arma series, and the eighth installment in the series overall. Over a decade since its release, Arma 3 maintains a substantial player base and an active modding community. Arma 3

Beecarbonize

The free-to-play strategy game Beecarbonize challenges players do plan and choreograph climate policies and sustainable sociotechnical developments. Players can prioritize between industrial reforms, nature conservation or people initiatives. From the Steam page: “There are many ways to solve climate change and reduce pollution. But saving the planet is not an easy task. The more carbon

Snowpiercer (Movie)

Snowpiercer is a 2013 post-apocalyptic movie by Bong Joon-ho based on the French graphic novel “Le Transperceneige” by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette. The movie takes place in a fictional near future, in which Earth has completely frozen due to climate change and ecocide. All humankind left survives aboard a single train, the

Frostpunk 2

Frostpunk 2 is the sequel of the 2018 RTS (Real Time Strategy) game by 11 bit studios in which the player takes the role of a Overseer entitled to administrate a small community in a frozen post-apocalyptic Earth.

Planta Nubo

According to the designer, quoted after Boardgamegeek, “In Planta Nubo players grow energy-rich flowers and plants in cloudy gardens – the treetops of the Arbors. Deliver them to bee-like airships which transport them to the biomass converters to be transformed into green energy. Sow woods on the freshly harvested soil. Energize helpful modules while your woods, your

Dishonored 2

Dishonored 2 is the direct sequel of 2012 Arkane Studios’ awarded Dishonored. The story takes place a few years past the events of the first chapter, and lets the player take on the role of Empress Emily Kaldwin. Usurped of her throne by the Duke Luca Abele, she embarks on a journey through the southern