Month: May 2021

HOPE. DISCONTENT.  Now we’ve got your attention, welcome to the second entry in our world-famous series, Play Games, Save the Planet! This is where we rave about great games that support good causes, depict the climate fight in interesting ways, or have a fantastic message. Last time, we talked about Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, a delightful, warm hug of a game! This time we’re looking at Frostpunk, which is more like receiving a hug so someone can stab you in the back with an icicle. Uh, great?

You’re the leader of a group of settlers in a dismal, frost-flavored future where the world is a barren, icy wasteland. You know those terrible ice levels in platform games where the floor gets stupidly slippery and all the fun you were having slides away? It’s like civilization is living in one of those. Yippee!

It’s a city-building game where you don’t have enough materials to build a city. Instead, you have to quickly instruct your hungry, freezing survivors to gather the worryingly finite amount of nearby resources, build shelters, ways of cooking and gathering food, and a medical outpost for when everyone inevitably catches a cold. Oh, or frostbite. Why did I pick this game to play again? Did I decide living through a global pandemic was too uplifting?

Oh, yeah! Because the bleakness is exactly why it’s worth playing. After a few hours of Frostpunk, I paused to take a walk outside on a pleasant sunny day, breathing a sigh of relief that I don’t live in a chilly hellscape. I’d quite like to keep doing that! I do not thrive in a chilly hellscape! Because remember at the start of this paragraph, when we were both young and optimistic, and I told you that I ‘paused’ the game? Well, that wasn’t quite true.

I was actually banished:

Frostpunk is either very tough or I am very stupid. For now, let’s assume the former. This is a game about desperately gathering resources, carefully managing the ones you have, and getting your workers to fetch you more and keep the whole settlement running without mutinying against you. Within two in-game days, Frostpunk was tantalising a very nasty part of me with an offer to let me sign a law that would make my people work 24 hour shifts. Not even a could-you-stay-an-extra-hour-and-I’ll-get-the-donuts-tomorrow middle ground, Frostpunk?

This blog post is full of what we’ll charitably call ‘jokes’. Frostpunk hates jokes. This is a dour, serious game, from the soundtrack that sounds like a violin bursting into tears, to the endless whining of your populace (yes yes, I’m sure burying your friends is pretty tiring when you’re starving to death because of my incompetence, but come on – we all have problems). That’s particularly galling since the two main bars you have to watch throughout are these:

Hope? Hope? How am I supposed to do that in a game that doesn’t even have a ‘recommend Alba’ button? Apparently one of the ways you can raise hope is by building a Propaganda Centre. Yeah, it’s fair to say that the makers of Frostpunk think about as highly of humanity as I do of the Koch brothers.

So the game’s about as welcoming as someone beating you with an exit sign. But it is undeniably compelling. 11 Bit Studios get our weeping respect for committing to an incredibly grim vision of the future and sticking to it 100%. You can build propaganda in-game, but there’s no room to blast climate change denial here. This game makes it clear that living in a videogame’s ice level will be horrible.

Most video games try to be fun, for obvious reasons. But some of the biggest sleeper hits in this medium have shown that games are surprisingly good at exploring the darker side of humanity. Silent Hill 2 isn’t ‘fun’, but is a horrifying and fascinating exploration of guilt and grief. Dark Souls’ combat is entertaining, true, but that’s just a thin layer of joy wrapped around a world trapped in an endless cycle of pain and despair. It’s the sort of thing I imagine the makers of Frostpunk play when they fancy a laugh.

We should be proud of games that commit to a grim vision and entice players to immerse themselves in it. Frostpunk isn’t explicitly a ‘climate change game’ (the cause of the world’s cold snap is more sci-fi based) but the parallels with climate change are obvious. The game’s exploration of what’ll happen if we let the world fall into such a state of icy ruin, and how cutthroat humanity could become, makes for a fantastic, galvanizing experience. One that should make anyone who just shrugs and accepts climate change as inevitable (and therefore not worth trying to stop) realise that’s truly not an option.

We said this series would cover games that had a ‘fantastic message’. This might be a slightly darker interpretation of the word ‘fantastic’ than you were expecting, but Frostpunk’s dire warning of the struggle to survive in a colder tomorrow is still a message well worth heeding. Just try not to shoot the depressing messenger, eh? Although we are running out of food and shelter…

It might not be the game I turn to when I fancy an uplifting evening of gaming, but I’m glad I get to play things like this, instead of some patronizing platformer funded by the oil industry. Something like ‘Frostfun’ (which, thankfully, I’ve just made up) where you play an irresponsible snowman who happily bounces around HappyHappyIceLandHooray, encouraging children to use fossil fuels to help all the elves learn to smile again. Wait, why am I not pitching this? I could be so rich…

Frostpunk is available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox Game Pass for PC and Xbox. Give it a try this weekend and see why a future where we don’t stop using fossil fuels will basically be a LIVING HELL. Happy Friday everyone! 😀

My favorite way to prep for hot girl summer is to visit my long-neglected weed-infested island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. In the year-plus-change since we all collectively had a mental breakdown and turned to Animal Crossing to dull the existential dread, I’ve realized this game has taught me two important things. 1. No matter who says they don’t like drama, we ALL love to arbitrarily judge island villagers, and 2. Seasons matter.

For a game where so little happens, Animal Crossing has an irresistible hook to keep you crawling back. Every month there’s something new! The trees, bushes, fish, insects, and weather all change throughout the year and sometimes even throughout the day. Not only does this keep the game fresh, but it’s also based on real life natural systems. Neat idea, but one that’s going to get a lot trickier due to humans playing games (see what I did there?) with the climate.

Where different trees grow and when they bloom, or where different fish live and when, depend on things like temperature, available nutrients or prey, and the amount of sunlight. Climate change is disrupting the balance of these things at alarming rates. Even some of our favorite things in Animal Crossing are already changing in the real world.

For example, players and real-life humans in the northern hemisphere recently got to enjoy the romantic flowering of the cherry blossom trees. Hopefully, you were able to get senpai to notice you this year, but if not there is always 2022! Did we get senpai to notice us? That’s hardly relevant now is it. Anyway, soon Animal Crossing will need to officially change the week of the cherry blossoms in-game if they want to emulate real ecosystems. All around the world from Japan to the US, the iconic trees are blooming earlier and earlier.

In Kyoto, they found records to prove that this year’s bloom was the earliest on record in over 1,000 years! And like a party guest who turns up six hours early, with a barrel (?) full of old casserole (???) this is far from good news. You see, the trees are very sensitive to temperature and as spring months are getting warmer, the trees are blooming sooner and sooner. Some scientists worry that with continued rise in temperatures earlier and earlier in the year, the trees may not bloom at all. Then none of us will be able to complete our long neglected DIY recipes. Looking at you, Cherry Blossom Wand 🙁

So you may be thinking, “bah! I don’t need any of the special things in Animal Crossing. I love the consistent things. Like a good ol’ sea bass.” Ah yes, much like an emotionally-stunted ex who realized they “made a mistake,” the irritating-but-predictable sea bass is always there when you are looking for something better. As annoying as they may be, they are a staple in Animal Crossing, but in the real world they are trying to swim away from increasing water temperatures.

Black sea bass off the Northeast coast of the US have already started to show up farther and farther north than any historical records show. They aren’t alone – some studies estimate that some fish will shift their normal ranges as far as 1000 km away. Wow. So it turns out boring-but-reliable sea bass can be just as cold and distant as our ex after all. Pfft who cares? Who’s gonna go long distance with a fish anyway? Help, we’re drowning in this metaphor and don’t know how to get out.

But the problem is that people DO travel that far for fish. The people fishing for them! And it’s getting harder and harder to travel that far. You may think, “hey, just let the people who live closer catch those fish” but unfortunately it isn’t that simple. Just like we have created arbitrary hierarchies for which Animal Crossing villagers suck and which ones don’t, we’ve also created arbitrary systems to try and manage our fisheries. Usually those systems are based on physical or political boundaries rather than where the fish are. These are the things I think about every day for a living…I’m definitely not distracted by Animal Crossing OR trying to take the ghost of partners past joke too far.

Managing moving fisheries based on unmoving physical or political boundaries, of course, results in conflict. Look up the great mackerel war of the late 2000’s between Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Britain over access to this fish in the North Sea. As temperatures were increasing, the fish were migrating farther and farther north (sound familiar?) causing conflict between who was allowed to catch what between the disputing parties. In this case, there was no solution. The fish were fished beyond a sustainable amount and the population collapsed.

We don’t have to stand by and simply watch this problem advance. We can fight to ensure that we may frolic annually in cherry blossom blooms (we MUST make that cherry blossom wand) and continue to fuel our rage at predictable exes… I mean sea bass. The best way to do this is to learn more about the problem, support those who are trying to change it, and advocate for those changes however you can. To learn more about changing communities and species under climate change, follow blogs like ours and scientists like Malin Pinsky. You can also support organizations like the Clean Air Task Force:

Here at Climate Replay, the only air we’re not interested in clearing is with our aforementioned ex, so we think the Clean Air Task Force is brilliant. Go check them out and see how you can advocate for climate solutions in your communities!

Thanks to Mariah Pfleger for providing an excellent screenshot of Pietro, the not-at-all-excellent clown.

Today we’re going to be talking about everyone’s favorite JRPG. The one that was surprisingly dark and had an eco-friendly message that was way ahead of its time. That’s right! It’s Final Fantasy 7 Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door on the Gamecube! 

The year was 2004, and Nintendo had briefly lost their minds. How else to explain why they published a game starring Mario that features a noose in the opening hub area.

This is in Rogueport, the seedy underbelly of the Mushroom Kingdom, and the opening of one of the funniest games ever made. One level has you solving an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery on a train, after someone assumes Mario is a detective because they mistake him for Luigi (who also isn’t a detective?). Even that’s not as delightfully strange as the level where Mario becomes a pro-wrestler, or becomes a pirate, or visits the moon, or when you play as Bowser, desperately trying to find a way to be relevant to the main plot:

At one point Mario learns to fly by folding himself into a paper plane, an idea so silly-yet-brilliant that it should be ripped off in every game ever. It’s a wonderful anything-goes adventure with a cast of characters so winning that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand that they suddenly exist in real life and all hang out with me. Please. I am very cool.

But what’s this got to do with Climate Replay or sustainability? Who cares, go play it! Oh, wait a second. We care. And delightfully, so does the game…

On your adventure, Mario takes a trip to Twilight Town. Now I know that name sounds a little sinister, but this is still a family-friendly Mario adventure so I’m sure it’s not that bad and that everything has a smiley face drawn on it. Let’s take a look!

Okaaaaaaaaaaaay, so Twilight Town does look like the kind of place a resident of Silent Hill would think twice about visiting. But I’m sure it’s not that bad once you get used to it. It’s not like there’s a terrible curse upon the town wherein whenever a bell tolls, one of its residents gets turned into a pig…

Everyone calm down. This is still a Mario game and we all know how this works. Obviously he tracks down the villain, hops on his head a few times, saves the day, the end. It’s not like the villain actually possesses Mario, steals his identity, and traps him as a shadow doomed to wander the Earth, friendless and alone for the rest of his da… you can see where I’m going with this can’t you?

To defeat this monster and get his body back, Mario needs to learn the villain’s true name, Rumplestiltskin-style. Er, obviously. To do this, you have to take advantage of your new shadowy existence to spy on the local villagers. Actually, that would almost make sense, which is not this game’s style. So you have to spy on the local crows. Whatever you say, game!

This is where the sustainability stuff comes in. All the crow conversations are hilarious, but one of them also reveals what crows are really worried about (it’s at 0:34 in the video below),  the depletion of fossil fuels:

The first crow mentions it’s making them depressed, and their crow companions agree. But then they immediately start talking solutions! Hydroelectric and solar energy both get shout outs. In a Nintendo game. In 2004.

It’s a funny moment in a game overstuffed with them, but also one that feels weirdly radical today. In a time where Ubisoft endlessly claims all their games are ‘non-political’ (including The Division 2, a game where your main base of operations is the white house), it’s pretty incredible to see fossil fuels categorically shouted out as a problem. The context might be ridiculous but the seriousness of why renewable energy is vital isn’t the punchline. More games should be doing this! 

It’s not a perfect moment, mind. The problems we face today aren’t so much caused by the depletion of fossil fuels, but the fact we need to stop using the ones we have because of their devastating effects on the planet. Perhaps Mario Odyssey 2 could make up for this by having you butt-stomp all the world’s oil back into the ground? Perhaps it’s ideas like that which explain why Nintendo never called me about a job interview? I guess we’ll just never know.

Here at Climate Replay, this game got us stroking our chins and wondering what other games talk about climate change? It could be a large part of the game, or even a bizarre, throwaway moment like this one. Do you know any? Then tell us! We’re working on an upcoming post about the history of climate change in video games and would love you to get involved. You can share climate change moments you’ve spotted in in games on our Discord server or drop us an email at [email protected] with the subject line #hangmario. I mean CLIMATE GAME.

Shall we end on a screenshot of the Twilight Town’s mayor’s incredible oinking after he was turned into a pig? I think we all know the answer to that:

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to let us know what climate change stuff you’ve spotted in your games!

Welcome to Play Games, Save the Planet! A new series where we rave about great games that support good causes, depict the climate fight in interesting ways, or have a fantastic message. Or in the case of today’s game, do all three! Yes, we’re kicking things off with a game so delightful it made me smile, and I’m British. They throw people out of my country for far less. It’s Alba: A Wildlife Adventure!

We’ll take a look at some of the terrific organisations developer ustwo games have gotten involved in. But first, let me introduce you to a game so pretty that my eyes officially aren’t worthy of looking at it…

Out now on Apple Arcade and Steam (and coming to lots of other platforms this year), Alba is the best childhood summer holiday you’ll ever take. Young Alba visits her grandparents on a sun-soaked Mediterranean island. Wait, did I just spell ‘Mediterranean’ right on the first try? Whoa, suddenly my crippling Creative Writing college debts were all worth it! Even if playing this game is the closest I’ll ever come to affording a vacation….

Anyway, Alba soon learns that this picturesque island has a lot of problems. Its decrepit Nature Reserve has clearly seen better days. But instead of fixing it, Mayor Toni has plans to convert it into a luxury hotel. WHAT?!!?!??!?!?!??! >:O

Alba and her friend Inés aren’t going to stand for that rubbish. They found the brilliantly-awkward acronym AIWRL (Alba Inés Wildlife Rescue League) and start petitioning island residents for signatures to prove they don’t want no stupid hotel. You also prove the island is home to all sorts of fantastic indigenous life in need of protection by taking photos and cataloging the animals with a nifty app on Alba’s phone.

Fair warning: getting snaps of all the animals gets addictive. Really addictive. It’s easy to forget what you were meant to be doing because you’re too busy scampering across the island trying to track down that elusive owl you need for your collection. It’s even educational. Thanks to this game I now know that the latin for squirrel is inamabilis sciurus, and therefore I finally feel complete inside. About time!

If you’re playing on iOS, you even move Alba’s phone around to position her camera by moving your phone/iPad. This is, and I’m not interested in any counter-arguments here, clearly powered by magic. I’ve burnt people at the stake for less.

Excellent touch screen controls on iOS make exploring a breeze, and who wouldn’t want to take thousands of photos on an island this pretty? It’s a gorgeous place to explore, all accompanied by the various barks, tweets, and baas of the animals, and a wonderful soundtrack by Lorena Alvarez that’s officially the best thing to happen involving sound since the invention of the ear. 

Having said that, some of the animal design is a little unrealistic. I mean, what the heck is this animal supposed to be?

UGH. Irredeemable JERKS have coated the whole island in garbage! I’d be throwing up right now, if that wouldn’t just make the problem worse. Luckily, the game won’t stand for this. You’re encouraged to pick up the trash whenever you come across it. 

We raised an eyebrow at putting the garbage in bins instead of recycling it, but then Alba’s grandma gave us a recycling bag and we put that eyebrow safely back down. Encouraging recycling is a great moral for a game, especially considering the moral of too many other games is ‘guns solve everything’. Which is… yeah. Not great.

It’s got a witty script, great characters, is super-relaxing to play without being dull (an incredibly tricky balancing act to get right) and anyone who thinks God of War’s Kratos is the most intimidating hero in video games has clearly never crossed the wrath of little Inés:

Who knew recycling, community organizing, helping animals, and rebuilding nature could be so fulfilling? And that writing isn’t fulfilling at all in comparison? Lesson learnt for my next life, I guess. In the meantime, at least I get to enjoy such a warm-hearted adventure. One that my stone heart, covered in a thick layer of lockdown ice, desperately needed. Thanks Alba!

But it’s not just a fun game with some great things to say. The developers also support some fantastic organisations that you can find on their official website. I’m gonna research them now then continue writing this article! Oh no what if they all turn out to be evil 🙁

UPDATE: They didn’t turn out to be evil. Phew!

First off, Alba developer ustwo games have partnered with Ecologi, a tree-planting organization. This isn’t because ustwo games have lost their minds and have started trying to get their game to run on actual trees, like I initially assumed, because I’m an idiot. They’re actually trying to help Ecologi plant 1 million trees!

At time of writing, they’ve already managed 652, 923 trees. Every time someone purchases or downloads Alba, they’ll plant another. So even if you end up hating the game, you soulless monster, why not download it anyway?

Not content with merely helping plant hundreds of thousands of climate-helping trees, ustwo games are also a founding partner in Count Us In. They’re trying to inspire 1 billion citizens to reduce their carbon pollution and deliver global change. Well, as long as all 1 billion readers of this article (I round up) are inspired, that shouldn’t be a problem.

But even that’s not all. Because ustwo games, who, frankly, are just showing off at this point, are also part of the Playing for the Planet alliance, a UN initiative (you can find out more about them by clicking this sentence instead of reading it. Though I concede you could click on it and read it, I suppose).

Finally, ustwo games is a B Corp. That’s not just me trying to insult them and not being able to think of anything good (“haha you’re not an A Corp! Oh God I’m so lonely”). To quote directly from Alba’s website, ‘B Corps are for-profit businesses that meet the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. Through Alba, and these amazing initiatives, we hope to create a measurable positive impact in the world.’

Sounds good to us! What do you think, Inés?

…I was actually more fishing for a compliment on my article. But what the heck, I agree!

You can find out more about Alba, and purchase it, by clicking this sentence and heading to their official website.

Climate Replay is not affiliated with ustwo games. This is just a passionate, borderline-creepy fanpost!