The Deep Forest is a free collaborative mapping RPG game that addresses several themes related to but often not directly associated with the climate crisis, in particular monstrosity, inhabiting non-human perspectives and postcolonial perspectives on human-nature relationships.
The game’s website summarizes the premise as follows: “For a long time, our monstrous home was occupied by invading humans. Now, finally, we’ve driven them off, and we’re left with this: a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to dismantle their settlements and reclaim our lands. Come Winter, a band of heroes will arrive and we might not survive the encounter. This is when the game will end. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, we monsters have an opportunity for healing and self-discovery in our deep forest, away from human eyes.”
The Deep Forest re-imagines and follows up on themes from the designer’s earlier map(ping) game The Quiet Year.