Cloud Gardens

From the presskit description: “In Cloud Gardens the player overgrows lo-fi scenes of urban decay and manufactured landscapes. Plant your seeds in the right place to create small overgrown dioramas with hundreds of different items and progress through the stages in six chapters. Discover a dozen different seeds and learn how to make them thrive. Use the photo mode to show off your creations.”

The game’s lo-fi aesthetics evoke sentiments of nostalgia, e.g. through visual callbacks to PS1-era graphics but also via the framing device of the diorama, which is often associated with pre-digital times. All in all, the game can be regarded as part of the small but growing subgenre of ‘cozy apocalypse’ games, though in this case without human protagonists.

The player essentially identifies with ‘nature’ reclaiming territory that used to be lost to human interference, e.g. overgrowing symbols of consumerism and human expansion like shopping carts, cars and buildings. The posthuman identification it affords can have a positive impact but might also create a sense of false empowerment as nature has already outlasted humans and does not face opposition.