It’s our first birthday! Let the celebrations begin!

Sound of party popper being set off and cheering.

Sound of rapid typing as we panic-search ‘are party poppers bad for the environment?’

Sound of nervous gulping.

Uh oh. Looks like their overreliance on plastic means they absolutely are. Let’s try and get this celebration back on track, by looking at some of the things Climate Replay’s achieved in its debut year:

DISCORD COMMUNITY

Not a minute goes by that I don’t loudly rave about the Climate Replay Discord server. People would probably tell me to shut up if it wasn’t a clearly brilliant community that has helped us share experiences, learn more about how we can help the planet, and discuss our favourite videogames. They’ve taken part in our Climate Quests (more on that soon!) and our first Game Jam (that too!) and they’re an absurdly friendly bunch who you should join today by clicking on this sentence. Let’s ask Baela, our awesome community manager, more:

“Climate Replay’s community is full of curiosity and interest in learning how we can make a difference. It’s been incredible to see discussions on the blockchain and environmental impact, local activism, and personal sustainability pop up and be encouraged and well researched. If someone has a question, everyone helps to find an answer. I’m incredibly proud of our community and can’t wait to see what comes next!”

Thanks Baela!

RED CROSS LIVESTREAM

We took part in a livestream with the British Red Cross! And by ‘we’ I mean ‘people who weren’t me’. Let’s ask Cory, one of those very people, more:

“Just a few months after we launched Climate Replay, the British Red Cross reached out to us to collaborate on raising awareness about climate adaptation. It was really exciting to see that even though we had just launched, such a large organisation wanted to work with us to use games to help create conversation around such an important issue!”

Thanks Cory!

GAME JAM

Usually we spend the New Year wishing January would go away and accidentally still writing ‘2021’ on far too much important paperwork. But 2022 actually got off to a great start, as we did our first ever Game Jam! Let’s ask Anaka how that went:

“We kicked off our first gamejam in early 2022, keeping it low-key and inclusive to test the waters and see what it takes to pull one off. It brought together people from a broad range of time zones, who helped each other out and created experiences together. It was really great to see what they made, and to show everything off in a stream after wrapping the jam up. Games have the potential to change the world, and its tools should not be gatekept to just a few select people. This, I hope, was a first step to filling the world with eco friendly games!”

Hear hear!

CLIMATE QUESTS

We decided to gamify getting more eco-friendly with a fortnightly batch of Climate Quests. These ranged from simple objectives (eat more vegan meals!) to slightly more ambitious goals (solve the climate crisis in ten minutes! Wait, maybe we didn’t go with that one in the end…). All rewarded with virtual leaves that helped you ascend our puntacular leaferboard and try living a greener lifestyle. Let’s ask Quest-wizard Baela more:

“I’m thrilled to share the news of the success we’re having with climate quests. Our community is learning about deep climate issues, environmental politics, and activism through our gamification of education. From trash pickups to petition signing to video watching to article reading, it’s a blast watching our community learn and engage with climate in a way that resonates with them. The friendly competition when it’s time for golem quests is also great ;)”

Here’s to another year of awesome quests!

ALL THE FRANKLY ABSURDLY GOOD ART YOU SEE IN THIS BLOG AND THROUGHOUT CLIMATE REPLAY

What’s that? You’d like to see what Climate Replay would look like if I was in charge of making all the art assets? I thought you’d never ask! Meet Wormy, the Official Climate Replay Worm:

Needless to say, Climate Replay would look even worse than a hungover toilet if it wasn’t for the brilliant art assets made by Mariana:

These artworks may not have Wormy’s charm, but they’re still pretty spectacular I suppose. Thanks Mariana!

THE CLIMATE REPLAY BLOG

Since launching Climate Replay, we’ve given you a primer on the very first Earth day (oh yeah, happy Earth Day btw!), written a gamey guide to nonsense greenwashing terms to look out for, used Animal Crossing to explore why our seasons are worth saving, recommended some ace green games (which included the greatest screenshot of all time):

And much more! But this blog would be more useless than a concrete parachute if it weren’t for our fact checkers, explaining things like ‘global warming is a bad thing’ and ‘come on, did I seriously have to tell you that global warming is a bad thing?’ I asked Frances for a quote for this blog post, and when she realised I wasn’t asking if global warming is a bad thing again, she happily obliged!

“I’m so fortunate to be a part of the Climate Replay team – it is really inspiring to be around smart, kind, and funny people with so many different stories and skills. I’ve learned a lot this last year while researching and fact checking the wide and vast world of climate change, video games, humanity, and you know everything in between that we try to talk about.”

Thanks Frances!

IS THAT EVERYTHING?

Hardly! We also teamed up with Terra Firma Task Force, wrote a Primer on the IPCC, and took a few pops at Cloud Strife’s hair. And we’ve got so much more to come. We’re confident that the second year of Climate Replay will be so good, it’ll make the first year look like a concrete parachute. Wait, did we already use that line? Well, that’s the kind of rookie mistake we won’t be making in our second year! Now why not head over to our Discord server and tell us about the delicious, environmentally-friendly birthday cake you’re totally going to bake us?