What’s your New Year’s Resolution? Ours is to stop opening these Climate Replay blog posts with a couple of irrelevant sentences and instead get straight to the point for onc… aw, dang. OK, fine, well our new New Year’s Resolution is to point and laugh at the January blues, by defying this depressing month and hosting Climate Replay’s first ever Game Jam!
Game Jams are collaborative events where a bunch of creative types spend several days making cool things together. What better way to kick off Climate Replay’s second year? It’ll begin on January 22nd and run until January 30th, and if you’ve never taken part in a game jam before, this is the perfect place to start, as this is not a competition. It’s going to be a community event where ANYONE can take part. If you’ve got some game-making skills, great! But we also want you to get involved if you’re an artist, writer, musician, tester, or even just an enthusiast who wants to contribute as a cheerleader. Never underestimate how helpful someone yelling “YOU GOT THIS!” while waving pom-poms at you is for the creative process.
Over on our lovely Discord server (click here to check it out), you’ll find some new game jam channels where you can learn everything you could ever want to know about our game jam. You can register to take part, ask us any burning questions you may have, and even help us pick the theme!
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS CLIMATE REPLAY? IT’S JANUARY 2022 AND I JUST WANT TO GO BACK TO BED
We’ve seen a huge amount of creativity already from the Climate Replay community in the aforementioned (but never plugged enough!) Discord server, with your awesome art and enthusiasm for our Climate Quests. So we want to activate that creativity in our community with a game jam that encourages people to create positive stories.
Apocalyptic stories in speculative fiction definitely have their place. Butthere’s so many of them. Some are also starting to treat the Climate Crisis as an inevitability, an exciting playground for futuristic funtimes, rather than something that can and must be stopped at all costs (*cough* Battlefield 2042*cough*) or even still tiresomely pretending that they’re not warnings about the Climate Crisis at all (oh hello again Battlefield 2042!Cough cough cough!). Sometimes a doomy gloomy tale can be effective in galvanizing people, but when you’re living through a Covid apocalypse already, one in which Santa just got us a new Omicron variant even though we clearly asked for the new Switch OLED, these stories can wear you down. It’s important not to just imagine the negative but aspire to the positive. That’s why all our potential themes are geared towards telling positive stories of a more climate conscious future that we should all be aspiring to. Let’s make some aspirational games together!
To reiterate, the Game Jam will officially start on January 22nd and run until January 30th. In the weeks and months that follow, we’ll be streaming your games! Will we be bad at them? No comment. Head over to the Climate Replay discord guild to find out more about how you can take part in our January Game Jam!
Tom Stone
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Climate Replay and Terra Firma Task Force are Teaming Up!
Teamwork. It’s how we can fight the climate crisis. We’re only going to win the war on climate change-denial and stop the world turning into a boiling bowl of Earth soup if we work together. This is a multiplayer campaign people! Bring at least two controllers or we don’t stand a chance. Yes, one of them can be a Mad Catz pad. But only because this is a climate emergency…
All of which is to say that Climate Replay is getting in on this multiplayer idea by teaming up with some awesome environmentalists! We have a Climate Replay Discord Server, where you can gossip about your climate concerns, learn from others how you can help in the climate fight, take part in our Climate Quests, and chat about games and more. I was about to throw some shade and dubiously claim that it’s the only Discord server in the entire universe that’s worth your time, but that would slightly sour today’s announcement – we’re partnering up with Terra Firma Task Force and becoming sister servers!
Terra Firma Task Force are a collective of environmentalists who’ve curated a fantastic Discord server for anyone who wants to learn what they can do to help the climate fight. They run excellent campaigns like Dollar Gardens, which asks for just one dollar to help grow community gardens that help the planet, and support campaigns like Protect the Arctic, which has been pressuring the Biden administration to finally release Mother 3 in the West. Oh, wait *checks notes* …Sorry, they’ve actually been pressuring the Biden administration to Protect the Arctic. Yeah, that makes more sense.
The Terra Firma Task Force Discord also spotlights awesome industry events, has a climate news channel where people share stories you might have missed, a channel for sharing photos of pets (which made for lovely, reassuring viewing after I read too many of those news stories) and so much more. Essentially they’re a lovely community who are dedicated to making the planet better. Nice!
While we calm down, check out the Climate Replay Discord here, and the Terra Firma Task Force Discord here.
Tom Stone
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Climate Quests: Fire Golem Versus Ice Golem!
Have you joined the Climate Replay Discord server yet? Not that I’m biased or anything but it’s the greatest Discord server in the known universe. You can talk to like-minded folks about your climate concerns, learn from others how you can help in the climate fight, chat about games and more, and take part in our CLIMATE QUESTS.
CLIMATE QUESTS are so amazing that they have to be capitalised at least twice in this blog post by law. These bi-weekly quests are a fun, accessible way to encourage and learn about more climate-conscious hobbies, like ‘make a vegan/vegetarian meal’ and ‘stop saying you think the Koch brothers had some good ideas’. Completing quests earns you virtual ‘leaves’ and our undying love. We’ve seen tons of you taking part, earning leaves and climbing up our Leaferboard! Autocorrect, if you change that to ‘leaderboard’ one more time I swear to Big Leaf… You can learn more about Climate Quests by clicking here.
All up to speed on Climate Quests? Great! Now, forget everything you know about Climate Quests, because this time we’re trying something new. Something WAR.
Fire! Ice! Isn’t it about time we finally settled who would win in a fight? Well, fire, obviously, but shhhh you’re spoiling our fun. We’ve decided to pit our Fire Golem and Ice Golem against each other. How this’ll work is that when you complete a quest, you can decide if the virtual leaf you’ve earned is allied with the Ice Golem or supports the Fire Golem (doesn’t matter if you’re somewhere cold or hot in the world – pick whichever golem you want to support). At the end of this quest season, we’ll tally up the leaves and see which Golem reigns supreme!
BUT WHY ARE YOU NOW PRO-WAR, CLIMATE REPLAY? YOU SEEMED LIKE SUCH A SENSITIVE SOUL..
Good loaded question! We’ve been breaking up our quests into seasons. But we realised that Winter for one part of the world is Summer for another. We want either a fiery or icy theme for the next quest season (which will start in December and run into March), but we don’t want it to feel like we’re ignoring an entire hemisphere by choosing between them ourselves. So we thought, why not make a game out of it? Climate and gaming is supposed to be our whole thing…
With the world’s climate rapidly changing, this is absolutely not the time to be ignoring any of the hemispheres (so if you have a weird irrational beef with the Southern hemisphere, it’s time to bury the hatchet now). These quests should be a fun way to be more climate conscious andbecome more aware of how the different seasons impact very different parts of the world.
So! The winning golem will decide whether the theme of the next season of quests is based on fire or ice. You have from November 22 to December 6 to hand in climate quests and partake in the most epic battle in all of human history. It’s gonna get nasty, brutal, and good for the environment. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Depending on which golem wins, our iconic big leaf will either be ice-themed or fire-themed! Will this go down in history as the first and last time Climate Replay supports setting a leaf on fire?
If you’re a member of the excellent Climate Replay Discord server (not a member? Click this sentence to check it out) you might have noticed over the last few months we’ve been doing something called Climate Quests. These are simple challenges that we refresh every two weeks and encourage anyone who wants to to take part in. Today, we’re giving them their first significant overhaul! And my personal quest is to explain this to you without getting confusing or banging on about The Great Ace Attorney instead yet again. Wish me luck.
Our aim with these Climate Quests has been to gamify making more environmentally friendly choices in a way that’s fun and accessible. Is it working? We think so! So far we’ve encouraged you to share your vegetarian/vegan meals, show us some of your best nature shots in your favorite games and IRL, and to watch/listen to some awesome videos/podcasts about how you can help the climate fight. And not once have we accidentally made one of the quests ‘buy shares in Shell’. Go us!
A quest from our Discord server, encouraging you to make a vegan/veggie meal! Maybe something slightly more ambitious than three berries and two lettuce leaves, but don’t let me control your life.
Upon handing in your quests on the Discord server, you’re awarded virtual leaves. The more leaves you have, the higher up you go on the leaferboard. So far, all that’s really given you is something great to brag about at dinner parties (e.g. “you’re working on a cure for cancer? I suppose that’s almost as impressive as the five leaves I have on the Climate Replay leaferboard.”) But today that all changes, because we’re launching our first Climate Replay quests season. From October 11th to December 21st, it’s officially Spooky Season!
(We went with Spooky Season because October has Halloween in it. And November and December are also part of the endlessly spooky horror of a year known as ‘2021’).
The big difference seasons introduce is we’re now going to be giving out Seasonal Rewards! Both for the quest wizards who get the most leaves, and anyone who hands in a certain amount of quests. Let’s take a ghostly look at some of the prizes on offer! What’s a ‘ghostly look’ I hear you scream? Why, an incredibly weak attempt to force some spooky terms into this blog post, of course!
SEASONAL PRIZES
Each season, we’ll refresh the leaferboard and everyone’s leaves. We’re not going to do that for this debut season, as it wouldn’t be fair on everyone who took part over the Summer. So that means the first refresh will happen on December 21st 2021.
At the end of the season, we’ll be offering special prizes to the top three people on the leaferboard. They’ll get to choose one of these:
Your choice of game code from a selection of games (TBA, but we’re massive gaming snobs, so we promise they’ll be good ones!)
Custom Discord Avatar (just look at the quality of the art in this blog post to see what a great prize that is!)
Custom Minecraft Skin!
I will officially call you cool with my own face (don’t know why I’ve ended this list with the worst prize, but here we are!)
All three winners are invited to help us set quests for the next season too. ‘Let us just win again’ will not be a valid suggestion. Nice try.
DISCORD PRIZES
Get 30 leaves or more and you’ll be assigned the new role on our Discord of Quest Capybara Level 1! You can only hit one level per season, which also means you only have one season to hit that level – so get on those quests asap!
A channel for each quest level to chat in – yep, an exclusive channel solely for Quest Capybara Level 1’s! Which, admittedly, will be very quiet for the first person to reach level 1. But just think of the bragging rights.
Custom Art. We somehow tricked some astonishingly talented artists to help with Climate Replay (as you can see in this very blog post). We’ll offer you some custom art too!
I’ll personally apologise to you for that ‘ghostly look’ line in this blog post.
Since starting Climate Replay earlier this year, we’ve loved watching our Discord community grow and grow. We want to get more people involved with the joys of vegetarian/vegan cooking, discovering videos and resources about how we can be more sustainable, and sharing lovely gaming moments to distract us from the horror of *gestures broadly at basically everything*.
Great Climate Podcasts (and the perfect games to play while listening to them)
I spent decades of my life trying to figure out what to do with my ears. Stick rings in them? Draw little smiley faces on the lobes to keep me company? Then I discovered podcasts and suddenly having ears finally made sense. They’re a terrific way to swot up on a subject you want to know more about, and they go great with playing games too!
Well, certain games. The Last of Us 2 probably doesn’t carry as much emotional weight if you can’t hear Ellie weeping over your podcast loudly explaining why the new Space Jam ruined its childhood. So we thought we’d compile a list of excellent environmental podcasts and games that are perfect to enjoy with them. Got some recommendations of your own? We wanna hear ‘em! Come join our Climate Replay Discord server and share them with us.
Beam potential fixes to the biggest crisis of our age right into your grateful ears. Journalist Alex Blumberg and scientist/policy nerd (her description, not mine) Dr. Anya Elizabeth Johnson do deep dives on the problems our poor planet faces. They interview guests about potential solutions and their infectious enthusiasm leaves me much more optimistic about where we’re headed. Anyone feeling like the Earth’s problems are unfixable should definitely get on this immediately!
Listen To It With: Slay the Spire
So gob-smackingly brilliant that I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised to see God’s name listed in the end credits. This deck-builder roguelike has you exploring the titular spire armed with cards that execute attacks, defences, debuffs, and ideally combinations that make for brilliant strategies (when it all goes to plan, which it almost never does) that give this game astonishing replayability and depth. All turn-based too, so you can pause whenever you want to concentrate on your podcast. I’m genuinely too ashamed to share a screenshot of how many hours I’ve sunk into this one, so we’re moving hastily on to…
Not familiar with ‘books’? I’d never heard of them either. They seem to be paper-based text adventures, and Marshall Poe’s delightful podcast has made me an instant fan. Poe interviews authors of books about the environment, helping them pitch why their chosen subject is so fascinating. After a few episodes, I’ve ended up with a reading list almost as long as my Steam library. An outstanding audio gateway into finding great climate tomes!
Listen to it With: Monster Train
In this deck-builder roguelike (I know, I know – it’s a phase I’m going through), you’re trying to keep a train full of demons running, all while angels try to stop you, in what I’m just now realising is a pretty good metaphor for working in the fossil fuel industry. Monster Train’s masterstroke is to constantly give you new powers that feel amazing to play with, then delight in watching you fail anyway as it throws malicious curveballs at you. You’ll keep replaying it just to wipe the grin off the game’s nonexistent face. Didn’t have time to fill this paragraph with awful train puns because I couldn’t stop playing it, sorry.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that podcasting can be a little self-indulgent sometimes (hypocritical, maybe, since I usually use this ‘climate’ blog to just bang on about how much I wanna marry Phoenix Wright). But there’s nothing self-indulgent about TILclimate. Each episode is just fifteen minutes long and they pack a terrific amount of info into those 900 seconds without ever overwhelming you. They aim to make the climate crisis significantly less confusing by interviewing a wide range of scientists and experts, giving you great breakdowns of the problems we face and (huzzah!) what we can do about them. Scroll through the list of topics then learn something new in basically no time at all. The TIL in the title stands for ‘today I learned’. Did it take me more than fifteen minutes to figure that out? That’s hardly relevant.
Play it With: Tetris 99
A Battle Royale version of the world’s most famous puzzle game? What should be an incoherent, gimmicky mess actually fills Tetris with new life even more effectively than the long block fills that gap you’ve been waiting to clear for ages. You’ll need microscopes for eyes to keep track of the 99 games of Tetris that are happening on-screen simultaneously. But stick with it and you’ll find this surprisingly strategic spin on multiplayer Tetris is one of the Switch’s best. Games usually last about 10-15 minutes, but make sure you’re committed to the podcast you’re listening to. Trying to change it in the middle of a game is about as wise as giving your Switch a bath.
It feels like TED has a podcast about every subject under the sun. They probably even have a podcast all about Climate Replay. Hope they don’t say mean things about my hair. Anyway, TED Climate covers a huge range of topics and issues, often with runtimes that make TILclimate look bloated (seven minutes long! That’s even less time than I spent proofkreading this blog plost). Longer episodes boast a high calibre of guests, with a recent episode featuring Al Gore interviewing John Kerry about how great Tetris 99 is. Or maybe they discussed the US reentering the Paris Climate Agreement. Go check!
Listen to it with: Holedown(aka, the game you triple-check you’ve spelt correctly before publishing the blog post)
…No. Sorry. I can’t ethically recommend Holedown. A shockingly-moreish spin on Breakout, all little Holedown asks you to do is fire pellets at targets to try and deplete their numbers to zero before they reach the top of the screen. That’s it. It’s so simple that it makes tic-tac-toe feel like trying to run NASA blindfolded, and yet that’s why it’s EVIL. Somehow they’ve made this more satisfying and addictive than every vice in human history. On the banned narcotics list, Holedown should be at least a hundred entries higher than crack cocaine. Perfect for listening to podcasts with, but must still be avoided at all costs. In fact…
Actually Listen To It With: Spelunky and Spelunky 2
Spelunky somehow makes randomly generated levels feel more tightly designed than a corset made of wrenches. They honestly feel like they’ve been carefully crafted to make descending Spelunky’s depths as engrossing as possible. You’re a little cartoon Indiana Jones-type armed with a whip, climbing ropes and bombs for blowing up deadly creatures and creating passageways. Unless you’re me, in which case those bombs are usually a first-class ticket on the Blown Yourself Up Again Have We express back to the title screen. Hang on, shouldn’t I have used that tortured train sentence in my Monster Train paragraph? Oh well. Spelunky and it’s marvellous sequel also just launched on Switch. Nice!
Sliced bread. Skippable cutscenes. Slowing down the pace of this blog so I can waste more time playing The Great Ace Attorney. Now we can add yet another great idea to this list of my favourite ideas – Climate Cafes!
Not familiar with climate cafes? Click this sentence for a handy primer. Essentially, they’re friendly, constructive places – both virtual and physical – where you can discuss the climate crisis with others who are just as keen to vent their frustrations about it as you are.
As if I could write about a cafe on Climate Replay’s blog without tipping my cap to The Roost from Animal Crossing. Come on now!
We’ve said constantly since the beginning of Climate Replay that no one should take on this climate fight alone (it’s essentially one of Climate Replay’s catchphrases, along with “what game can we use to make talking about this subject less depressing?” and “where’s the blog post you promised a week ago?”). Anyway, if you’d like to engage in a more constructive climate conversation, head to our Discord and join our virtual Climate Replay cafe!
Hey, it’s Herlock Sholmes and Ryunosuke Naruhodo, stars of The Great Ace Attorney, pointing up at the last sentence of the previous paragraph with slight smiles. That must mean they’re OFFICIALLY endorsing our Climate Cafe! Awww, thanks fellas!*
The Climate Replay Cafe will be a voice channel on our delightful Discord where you can talk about how you’re feeling and what’s on your mind. We’ll be hosting it this Saturday, August 21st at 11am EST (click this link to go to a handy time zone converter that’ll tell you what time that is in your part of the world!). We’ll have facilitators to help guide the conversations, but the goal here will be to focus on our thoughts and feelings about climate change rather than what we’re doing about it. Of course the latter is important too, but we want this to be a great social space to let people vent their climate anxieties with like-minded people! We’re doing this because we know thinking about the climate crisis can be incredibly mentally draining. Why do you think I keep crowbarring in references to that lovely new Ace Attorney game every two sentences just to restore my faith in mankind?
Having somewhere to share your feelings about what’s happening to our planet is super important. That’s why we’re using our lovely Discord community to put a virtual cafe together! Giving you somewhere to yell things like this:
In case you’re not picking up on the subtle subtext here, I am in love with this game.
Oh, and though this is a one-off event, we’re not ruling out hosting more climate cafes in the future. Stick around after and hang out with our Discord community! They don’t bite! And even when they do, it’s usually into a Vegan meal that uses climate-conscious packaging. What a nice bunch.
This was the tone I was planning to write this post in, but the other Climate Replay organizers worried it might not be very welcoming. Suit themselves.
That swan-hatted woman is almost definitely breaking a few of the community guidelines we’ll have for our cafe and that you’ll find in our Discord, so be sure to check those out too. See you at the cafe!
*For boring legal reasons, I should probably clarify that Herlock Sholmes and Ryunosuke Naruhodo are fictional characters who probably haven’t endorsed our Climate Cafe (at time of writing). Although the irony of us being sued by the lawyer game is almost too good to resist…
Tom Stone
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Introducing… Climate Quests!
Have you joined the Climate Replay Discord server? It’s great! Well, aside from the fact that Discord keeps ratting me out to everyone that I’m playing Mixolumia when I’m supposed to be writing this article… otherwise, it’s a fun way to hang out with the delightful Climate Replay community. Now’s the perfect time to join, too, because we just launched Climate Quests.
Every two weeks, we’re posting a new set of quests for you to complete in our Discord. These quests are fun, very achievable, and a great way to gain new climate-friendly habits and hobbies. Essentially they help you live a more climate-friendly lifestyle AND gamify your life in a gloriously green way. Nice!
What does this Mixolumia screenshot have to do with Climate Quests? Nothing, I just need to justify my hundreds of hours wasted playing it. So here we are.
Each quest comes with a frequency (the number of times per week you can do the quest before we beg you to stop) and a value (how many ‘leaves’ you’ll earn for completing the quest). The more leaves you have, the higher you’ll go up the leaderboard, just like how leaves work IRL. Kinda.
Wait, did I write ‘leaderboard’? I meant leaferboard! A pun so brilliant/controversial that my autocorrect just changed it back to ‘leaderboard’ four times in a row. Well, everyone’s a critic.
Our Climate Replay leaf emoji is so pretty, this article was another five hours later because I couldn’t stop staring at it. Fact? Fact!
One of our first Climate Quests is to make a Climate Friendly Meal! You get one leaf for a vegetarian meal, and a whopping two leaves for a vegan one. Let’s see if I can complete it now with a photo of my lunch:
Welcome to the third Play Games, Save the Planet! This is our somewhat-regular where we rave about great games that support good causes, depict the climate fight in interesting ways, or have a fantastic message. This week, thanks to the excellent Twitter account Plant Based Gaming, I found a delightful demo that’s well worth your time. Upcoming green-em-up, Terra Nil.
The game’s steam page describes it as ‘a reverse city builder’. To my initial disappointment, this doesn’t mean it’s a game where you play a city trying to build a person. No, This is all about restoring a tarnished environment and going even further until it’s a tropical paradise. Like transforming an oil spill into a kitten made of hugs, but more scientifically plausible, and less like the kind of example you come up with when you write the Climate Replay blog post at 4am again.
It gets prettier. Stick with it!
As someone who often replaces the word ‘hello’ with ‘I failed to find the bathroom in time’, I’m not one to judge when it comes to making a bad first impression. Good thing too, because Terra Nil starts you off with a barren wasteland that looks more like the start of an early Fallout game.
Luckily, this doesn’t last long. Lay down a turbine to get some wind power, then place a toxin scrubber and voila:
Marvel as all that dirt becomes less dirty! I mean… more dirty? Wait, that sounds even worse. Let’s go with ‘detoxified’. Trust us when we say that watching all that sickly grey turn into beautiful brown is immensely satisfying. But that’s got nothing on placing your first Irrigator. These magical machines instantly turn all that newly-healed soil into luscious green grass.
So handsome! If anyone can think of a better reason to own eyes than staring at this screenshot then I’m not interested in hearing it.
Essentially Terra Nil is about the joy of turning dismal, boring landscape into greenery so gorgeous I can barely tear my eyes from it to make sure I’m ending this sentence properl
Even just in demo form, Terra Nil is an absorbing, pleasingly calming game that got us thinking more about real world irrigation. I would love it if there was a machine like the game’s irrigator which we could switch on that would solve all our environmental problems for us. Then we could close down Climate Replay and I could get back to writing my Succession fan fiction (Logan Roy marries me! It’s disgusting!).
But in real life, irrigation is unfortunately a lot more complicated. It’s great that we have options to grow food even when conditions aren’t optimal. But, of course, humanity has a way of taking our new toys and kind of missing the point. We aren’t great at making sure that we are growing foods that are more appropriate for the climate or having variety that would promote a healthier ecosystem. We are just so OBSESSED with corn…And, as a global community, we’ve been eating more and more meat.
Seriously, what’s with all the hype around corn? It doesn’t look nearly as nice as Terra Nil. For that reason alone, we HATE IT.
What does this have to do with irrigation? Well, we have to grow more food for the animals to eat, so WE can eat them rather than eating the plants directly. If we ate less meat, this wouldn’t be as big of a problem, but overall the scale is getting out of control and we are running out of land and water to keep this trend up with a growing population. This fun report from the Princeton Environmental Institute explains how increasing reliance on irrigation (vital to meet growing demands in food supply as the world’s population increases) will likely involve “a far greater strain on aquifers, an increased expansion of agriculture into natural ecosystems, and an amplification of climate change through the production and operation of irrigation machinery.”
Irrigation has obvious benefits too, and in no way is Terra Nil suggesting that healing an ecosystem is as simple as right-clicking a machine then right-clicking on a piece of soil then running off to the bar to celebrate solving every problem ever. But it is a more interesting game when it starts introducing machinery which isn’t so utopian, and that instead demands you make trade-offs and take risks. Like the Excavator.
It’s that laser-shooting machine. Screenshots don’t do it justice – the game’s animations are sublime.
An Excavator can create a new riverbed, which is definitely something you want. However, it will also poison the land around it. Build wisely and the trade-off is worth it, but it’s certainly a risk you have to factor in. Much as I enjoy Terra Nill’s relaxing vibe, with its lovely piano soundtrack and charming art style, I’m still hoping for more tricky choices like this one in the main game. And not just because the laser animation when you use the excavator looks really, really cool and mentally I’m apparently still about five years old.
In the demo alone, healing these wastelands is an addictive delight, like popping the world’s prettiest pile of bubble wrap. Our favorite feature so far is the water pump that fills the riverbeds, initially as dry and depressing as stale crackers, with beautiful blue waters. You enjoy stale crackers? Don’t expect an apology. Seriously, what is wrong with you?
Once you’ve made the land grassy green enough, you can start building machines and placing stuff that increases the biodiversity. Like adding beehives to trees! Oh no. I legitimately have a crippling phobia of bees. I have ruined several picnics through cowardly screaming due to the presence of just a single bee, and I would do it all again. This is pretty unfortunate, considering how crucial bees are for the environment. Nonetheless, when I eventually faced my fears and got my shaking hand to move the mouse far enough to place a beehive in a tree, Terra Nil rewarded me with these:
Flower power! Bees, all is forgiven. Yes I am aware you didn’t do anything that I need to forgive you for. Let’s just move on.
Honestly, it’s just refreshing to play a game about helping repairan environment rather than blowing one up. And it’s being published by Devolver Digital! Usually I associate Devolver ‘Hotline Miami’ Digital with games so violent that I just broke every bone in my body thinking about them. It’s great to see a publisher like them releasing a green game like this. More of this please!
Food scarcity! Now I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about… oh. Food scarcity. Really?
Sure we can’t talk about a videogame instead? How about Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator?
Someday we’ll find some tenuous link between this perfect game and a climate issue. Then this blog will finally become the insufferable DD fansite of our wildest dreams…
Nope, we’re going to tear our eyes away from these delightful dads for a few minutes so we can tell you about an excellent new community garden fundraiser to help fight food scarcity. Maybe that will finally impress Damian…
Let me introduce you to something far less heartbreaking. Meet $eed Money.
One of the campaigns they’re currently running is tackling food deserts. A food desert is when a community lacks either affordable or nearby healthy food options, forcing them to travel great lengths, often at unaffordable costs, just to get a balanced diet.
Now I could try and explain it in our usual hilarious/obnoxious/thirsty way. But why don’t we just watch this excellent video of Alex Haraus explaining it infinitely more clearly? Let’s!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROyrZXxR6ec
As Alex just explained without a single laboured reference to Dream Daddy (each to their own) a great way to combat food deserts is through Community Gardens. Not only do they become a fantastic source of fresh, healthy food, they’re also good for the environment, encourage community togetherness, help mental and physical health, and would be the perfect place to take a flaming-hot father on a date (hypothetical example).
This is Damien “Goth Dad” Bloodmarch. For boring legal reasons, I’m not allowed to call him the official boyfriend of Climate Replay. So I’m just going to heavily imply it.
Here at Climate Replay, we don’t want to just fill your weekends with doom and gloom. We like solutions! And hot dads! But mainly solutions! On average in the United States, it costs about $1000 to get a community garden going. You might have noticed that that number is $999 more than my headline promised. You might be shrieking “CLICKBAIT!” from your frothing-mouth right now while planning to dox me out of revenge (don’t waste your time – as this article is proving, I’m way too open about what I’m into. Send me dads please).
But the reason we said it cost only a dollar is because – it does! One thing that makes this $eed Money fundraiser interesting is that they’ve capped donations at one dollar. You CAN’T donate more than a dollar, even if you want to. This may seem unnecessarily limiting, but they’re making a great point here. You don’t help people by having more money (extreme wealth inequality, after all, is one of the reasons we’re in this food desert mess in the first place). You help by getting more people involved. Donate your dollar then spread the word! Just like we’re doing! Not that we’re bragging or anything (do you think Damien noticed? Did he?!)
At time of writing they’ve raised $441. If you donate and tell your friends, and they tell some friends, and they tell some other friends, and those friends say “go away, I’m playing Dream Daddy” but then they feel bad for snapping at you, so they donate out of guilt, and then tell their friends, who also pause Dream Daddy and donate… well we could get a garden funded in no time!
Climate Replay is not affiliated with Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator or $eed Money. We’re just creepy fans of both.
Tom Stone
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Great Green Gaming Coverage From Sites That Aren’t This One! Not That We’re *Bitter* Or Anything…
You know the great thing about the internet? Besides the fact I can download SpiderMan: Miles Morales and spend the whole week playing that instead of writing this on time? Er, I mean, the great thing about the internet is that it’s full of fantastic coverage of games, the climate crisis, green issues, and stories that elegantly combine all three. This week we’ve decided to highlight a few recent articles, Twitter feeds, and eco-friendly-misery-geese that we think are well worth your time. Enjoy!
1. Horrible Goose Comes in Great Package
Untitled Goose Game was one of the best games about being an awful bird in years, letting you live the dream of being a real jerk chicken. Yes, I’m somewhat aware that geese aren’t chickens, but I can’t think of a better joke so here we are. Last year the game got a physical release. Physical game boxes, with their heavy reliance on plastic, are unsurprisingly dreadful for the environment (here’s an excellent Eurogamer piece about the game industry’s overreliance on plastic). But delightfully, Untitled Goose Game’s physical Lovely Edition PS4 release honked obnoxiously at that depressing trend by coming in 100% environmentally friendly packaging!
We’ve never been so happy to see a sign warning us that horrible geese are nearby.
In all their interviews, Amanda White and Jon Gibson of iam8bit are terrific at telling the story of how they made an eco-friendly physical release. They’re also super inspiring about how they hope this is just the beginning of a wider trend in the games industry. They tell packaging-gateway.com: “Everyone cares about the health of the planet, but unless a choice to be more environmentally responsible is very clearly laid out, it’s really difficult to find your own path. We think fans have been enthusiastic because we’re being really transparent about our approach and our wanting to make a difference. There isn’t a barrier to entry if you want to sample a healthier path for packaging. It’s a tiny glimpse into the crystal ball of the future so, with the support of fans, we can start to change the overall conversation and convert lots of publishers over to more eco-friendly pursuits.”
Hear hear! Or should that be, honk honk? I’m starting to think I should never be allowed to write about geese again. Go read the whole piece here. Honk!
Horrible goose, welcome to the resistance.
2. Go Grow Plant Based Gaming’s Followers!
Games don’t grow on trees, something I’ve known since I was a childteenager OK fine I learnt this yesterday. But despite not originating from the ground, games can still be heavily plant-based and nature themed. Those games are the focus of this terrific little Twitter account, Plant Based Gaming!
Goodness me, it’s like looking at a version of Climate Replay from an alternative universe. If their writer is a slimmer, prettier version of myself, then I’m not going to take that well.
Plant Based Gaming promotes games that focus on nature, conservation & oh wait you just saw all that in the screenshot directly above this paragraph didn’t you. Well anyway, they’re great! A quick scroll through their feed and I’d already found a ton of great new green games I wanted to try, and a few games I already love getting a shoutout (Alba! YASSSSSSSSS!).
Terra Nil? Looks more like Terra BRILL! I live alone. Rightly so.
This account is an instant follow for me! Or at least it would be, if I was on Twitter. Curse my undying loyalty to MySpace. Anyway, learn from my mistakes and follow @PlantBasedGamin so you can fill your feed with excellent-looking green games.
Do we have time for one more? *checks if Terra Nil has finished downloading* Oh, very well…
3. Man Makes ‘Pandemic’ board game. Decides That Not Depressing Enough?
The New York Times has a good profile on Matt Leacock, the creator of the hit board game Pandemic. Considering what we’ve been through for the last couple of years, you’d think the creator of a game called Pandemic might follow that up with something like Super Just Hang Out With Some Kittens For a While Adventure. But Leacock is made of sterner stuff, and is working on a game called Climate Crisis. Spoiler alert: it’s not about kittens.
Honestly, fun as I’m sure it is, I just think Pandemic would be too depressing to play right now. Then again I offered to play Frostpunk and Airplane Mode back-to-back so ignore me.
Here at Climate Replay, we’re more about the virtual games than the mysterious board-based ones that confuse and frighten us. But Leacock’s ambitions to make a game that is scientifically accurate, doesn’t undermine the realities of the climate crisis, but is also still fun to play, is a fascinating dilemma, one we’re hoping more game developers tackle head-on as enthusiastically as he has. Find out what several climate experts thought of his game when they playtested it.
Have you seen a good story that we should shout about? Tell us about it on the Climate Replay Discord server – then stick around and hang out with us after! HONK.
