Environment

New platformer wants you to know the environment is screwed

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Even the Ocean (Windows, Mac) BY ANALGESIC PRODUCTIONS Even the Ocean is a warning. It’s a game that wants to raise awareness of the human impact on the environment and for its players to spre

Hyaline plans to bring more empathy to the survival game genre

A collection of game creators from Australia are trying to build a new planet. Nothing as expansive as No Man’s Sky has promised, but instead taking cues from survival games like Don’t Starve (2013) to create a world that is as dangerous as it is beautiful, and full of life that you can’t just hack

Don’t hesitate to dive into Abzû

When I try to picture what the ocean depths must have looked like near England’s Jurassic Coast, 300 million years ago, I picture something like Van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889). I picture a space of stillness but also turbulent life, things moving ceaselessly in the restless dark; I picture everythin

Fear not, Pokémon will save the planet

Pokémon has a complex relationship with nature. It’s among the most explicit and enthusiastic depictions of natural history in kid-oriented pop culture, but environmental educators begrudge its popularity. The series gains species while our planet loses them, and that somehow feels like a bad trade—