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

Pandemic: Rising Tide

2-5 players | 45 minutes | Age 8+ Jeroen Doumen and Matt Leacock. Z-Man Games, 2017 Rising tide is a collaborative game where players must work together to build four hydraulic structures, to prevent the North Sea flooding low lying areas in the Netherlands. The game is based on true historical events reflecting the processes

Posthuman Saga

Gordon Calleja. Art by Edu Valls. Mighty Boards & Taverna Ludica Games, 2019. 1–4 players | 90–180 minutes | Age 14+ Game Review by Diana Dörfling Posthuman Saga is a post-apocalyptic adventure game where you take on the role of one of the last human survivors, sent out from the safety of the last human

College Student’s Perceptions of Online Learning during the Pandemic, and Frostpunk, the Apocalypse, and the “Enduring Temptation” of Ecofascism

Student perception is a key element in analyzing the state of pedagogic methods. With the rise of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, a shift to online learning among educational bodies across the world was prompted. This chapter looked at college students’ perceptions of job belief, digital communicative competence, testing, and classroom anxieties to

Rain World

Rain World might look a bit different than more prominent ‘ecogame’ examples but exhibits a few design decisions that stand out among other digital games and raise pertinent issues: Destabilizing anthropomorphism. The game exclusively features non-human protagonists and antagonists; moreover, while the in-game creatures are inspired by real-world counterparts (e.g. spiders and birds), they are

Surviving The Aftermath

In Surviving The Aftermath, you manage a colony of refugees in a post-apocalyptic world where natural disasters, bandit attacks and radioactive pollution are constant threats. The resurgence of a modern industrial civilization in your colony is necessary to protect it against a potential future cataclysm. The game reproduces the logic of city builders of increasing

A Life on Our Planet

A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future is a 2020 book by documentarian David Attenborough and director-producer Jonnie Hughes. It follows Attenborough’s career as a presenter and natural historian, along with the decline in wildlife and rising carbon emissions during the period. Attenborough warns of the effects that climate change and biodiversity

A Life On Our Planet

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is a 2020 British documentary film narrated by David Attenborough. Attenborough describes this film as his “witness statement” on the current state of the planet due to humanity’s impact on nature and his hopes for the future. He shares his concern from Pripyat, a town deserted after the nuclear Chernobyl disaster on 26 April 1986, and intersperses his

All the Good Girls Go to Hell

This song by Billie Eilish was published for her debut album When We All Fall Asleep - Where Do We Go?, and employs metaphor to convey "ideas, criticism, and feelings about global warming, particularly in the United States". The song is a call to action to fight the climate emergency; to tackle the rising oceans, melting icecaps, wildlife poisonings, and forest fires.

Solar Power

A psychedelic/folk-pop album by New Zealand -born artist Lorde. The album deals with nature as a an escapist haven, introspection, climate anxiety, and more through its lyrics, sonic themes and organic recordings such as the chirping of Cicadas.

“A Rickconvenient Mort” in Rick and Morty

The Netflix serial Rick and Morty is a comedy sci-fi animated show portraying a young teenage boy named Morty Smith and his nihilistic scientist grandfather Rick Sanchez whom travel through dystopian galaxies together. Every episode is a different story with dark humour intertwined. One of the most recently produced episodes called “A Rickconvenient Mort” features an ecological superhero named Planetina. Planetina forms an non-traditional eco hero, which shows the struggle of solving the Climate crisis. The character first poses as an ecofeminist symbol which is used as a business commodity to make profit. Later in the episode she is freed from her 'owners' and her archetype as Pure Hero fades. The struggle of solving big climate issues and at the same time act in an ethical way are pictured in the episode. She frames the broken system as the main issue.