Category: Blog

Anyone who’s ever looked at a skyline and mentally placed Tetris shapes onto buildings, knows just how powerful games can be at making us feel things. And making people feel things – whether that’s hope, righteous anger, or simply the gravity of the situation – is one of the most essential goals we have in combating the climate crisis together.

If you care about both games and our planet, game jams are just about the most impactful thing you can do to make a change, save for shoving a fossil fuel executive head-first into an oil spill. Here’s our complete guide on finding a team of like-minded people, and channelling your energy into a game that gets people talking, moving, and acting!

First off: what is a game jam?

A game jam is an event where participants set out to create a video game from scratch, either in teams or as a solo project. Some are professionally organised, with a set theme and a jury; others are informal passion projects by a group of friends. They typically last about a weekend, though some have been known to last for several weeks!

What they all have in common, though, is that they feature game enthusiasts coming together to learn, collaborate and create!

I’ve never worked on a game before – can I still contribute?

Absolutely! For many people, game jams are a first step into creating games. Whether you’re interested in learning development, art, narrative design, UX or music: they’re a wonderful opportunity to get some hands-on experience, and put theory into practice. 

If none of those roles speak to you, your knowledge of the climate crisis or experiences playing other games could be invaluable, too! 

Do I need to have an existing game idea to join?

That’s up to you! Some people have a pre-existing idea that they’ve been itching to bring into existence; others like to brainstorm once the jam begins.

How do I find a team to join?

If running solo isn’t for you, there’s many ways you can collaborate. Most events let you join with a pre-existing group of friends, but many also feature a match-making process that allows you to find new friends to collaborate with.

Of course, your odds of finding team members that are kind, collaborative and altogether breathtaking individuals are particularly high in Climate Replay’s own #matchmaking Discord channel. Or that’s the tittle-tattle on the streets, anyway.

Which game jam should I participate in?

There’s many great ones, which itch.io kindly keeps track of in this nifty overview. 

Is there anything I can do to prepare ahead of time?

Great question! If you’re interested in learning a new role from scratch, there are great resources online to teach yourself the basics in advance. That way, you can hit the ground running, and put your new-found skills into practice! 

Some of our personal favourites include:

Talks:

Climate Games: The Developer’s Field Guide: a half-hour talk on creating climate games from the acclaimed Game Developer’s Conference

Blog posts:

Coming Up With Ideas for a Game Jam Game

Video tutorials:

A basic introduction to Unity, one of the most popular game engines, by our very own Anna!

A basic introduction to 3D modeling in Blender, featuring the famous donut tutorial – a rite of passage for aspiring 3D artists.

A basic introduction to Figma, a tutorial to one of the most popular prototyping softwares, for all aspiring UX designers 

Making your first 2D game in Godot: a step-by-step tutorial to learning Godot, a more recent, open-source game engine

Other videos:

How This Woman Creates God of War’s Sound Effects: an intriguing look behind the scenes with sound effect artist Joanna Fan

“Make It Pop”: a short explanation on creating amazing special effects, by the legendary creator of Super Smash Bros., Masahiro Sakurai

For any other questions or recommendations, you’ll always find a welcome home in our Climate Replay #game-development and #jam-chat channels. Now go find your team, and get to work!

Imagine living in a dystopian nightmare where freedom is dead, and humanity has a new eternal master. I speak, of course, of the mighty capybara. A beast so cute we fatally underestimated it now reigns supreme. They rule with an iron hoof, forcing the few survivors of the human race to endlessly toil away to keep them comfortable in the horrific prison of Capybara Spa. Move over, Frostpunk! There’s a new gameplay-experience-more-depressing-than-a-kitten-funeral in town!

But imagine my shocked-Pikachu-face levels of surprise when Capybara Spa turned out to be a relaxing, pleasant game. That whole enslaving humanity thing was just a load of nonsense I’d made up because I hadn’t had enough caffeine yet. Yes, Capybara Spa is actually absurdly cozy. This is a game for people who find playing Animal Crossing too stressful. 

You start by building a little tub, then clicking on a capybara, dragging them across the screen (GENTLY), and dropping them in. They immediately start having a nice time. That means you’re already experiencing capybara joy within seconds of playing this. Does God of War: Ragnarok do that? No. No, it does not. That’s why Sony should cancel it immediately and try to snap up the rights to this instead.

Gameplay consists of earning money by keeping your capybaras happy (NOT THAT WE’RE IN IT FOR THE MONEY) and using said funds to expand your spa, thus bringing joy to even more capybaras (SEE). You grow vegetable gardens so you can treat the capybaras to a tasty carrot, and flower gardens so you can put flowers on their heads. You unlock the option to put baby capybaras in your tubs and this frankly is so adorable that your cynical British bones literally burst into flames. Adorable flames.

Capybara Spa is a cozy game, a genre that’s getting more popular as the world gets increasingly less cozy. Sometimes games like this can get tripped up by not having enough compelling gameplay. Or being so overly sweet and sentimental that they feel like being hugged to death by a giggling bag of sugar. Happily, Capybara Spa has a fun gameplay loop and a delightful aesthetic that lands confidently on the right side of pleasant.

Capybara Spa comes from Cozy Bee Games. One of my countless weaknesses is my irrational phobia of bees, but even my bee-fearing heart is no match for their adorable logo. Look at those smiley eyes. The pose that’s seconds away from a big fuzzy hug. This bee could fix me.

Eventually, you unlock insects that can help you take care of the capybaras. Slow insects. It’s the first game that made me consider firing a butterfly. I wonder if it’ll be the last? 

I’m just joking, of course! I’d never fire an employee who I don’t have to pay. My little blue-winged butterfly buddy, who I’m generously compensating with exposure in this blog post (you’re welcome! Get back to work!), helps feed the capybaras while I focus on adding banners and fences to pretty up my spa. I’m now so relaxed I decided to look up whether actual capybaras are an endangered species, so I can bring my mood down:

Oh. Nice!

Good… news? For… once? Not to be melodramatic, but sometimes keeping these blog posts upbeat feels like pushing a boulder uphill endlessly while all my childhood bullies laugh and pelt me with bad reviews of my hair. 

Because the world has a lot of problems right now. Sometimes that can get overwhelming, and while fighting to make the world better is important, it’s also important to take a breather now and then and give yourself some Me Time. So this weekend, book yourself a stay in Capybara Spa! You won’t regret it.

Capybara Spa is out now on PC.

Not to brag about my opulent lifestyle, but I have a garden. It’s constantly being broken into by a fox. This used to frustrate me, but after playing today’s game, I’ve decided the fox is more than welcome in my garden. In fact, take my house keys. I’ll live in the garden, and you enjoy the house. Clearly, your species deserves it more than mine. Also, please help yourself to my copy of Endling: Extinction is Forever, a great game that I never want to play again.

How can something starring so many adorable fox cubs be this evil? Endling’s assault on your heartstrings is enough to earn it a decent stretch in prison. Where’s the adorable fox game the box promised?

At least this bright blur of gorgeously animated orange fur is immensely satisfying to control. You can sprint, sneak, scrabble up trees, sniff out prey, and even lift one of your delightful cubs in your mouth and jog along with them. Shall we enjoy a couple screenshots of those cubs before it all goes horribly wrong?

Your main goal each day is to find enough food for your cubs before nightfall. Fruit from bushes, unlucky rabbits who aren’t fast enough, and no-doubt delicious delicacies from the garbage bags. In an undisturbed ecosystem, feeding your fox family daily would be no problem at all. But garbage bags don’t grow on trees, do they? 

*calls an arboriculturist* 

…No. Of course they don’t. But sadly, dumping garbage bags everywhere is one of the kinder things the humans are doing to your home.

Employees of Care Corp (hey, they sound great!) are enthusiastically polluting the forest, chopping down its trees, pouring trash into the river, pumping oily smoke into the skies, banning hugs, telling your one true love you don’t shower… and tragically, we only made the last two of those up. 

Food becomes increasingly scarce, forcing your fox to journey further away from the relative safety of its shelter. Soon you’re left with no choice but to enter the dangers of human territory in your desperation to feed your children. This was around the time I started searching ‘happier fox game’ online and tried to justify writing about that instead.

But Endling can be fun too. There’s some stealth gameplay. That’s fun, right? You have to time your scampering between bushes so you don’t get… shot. The Game Over screen even helpfully informs you that your cubs won’t survive without you. F-fun!
OK, on the significantly brighter side, your cubs gain new skills as you play. The moment one of my cubs learned to climb a tree independently and fed the rest of the litter filled me with a sense of parental pride I wasn’t ready for. Should I adopt a child? And have them play these emotionally devastating games for me while I laugh and eat little cakes? Yes.

The last game we covered in this award-deserving series was Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, which tells a similar tale of the dangers of deforestation. However, where Gibbon was a self-proclaimed ‘hopeful game’, Endling is clearly more of a ‘glass half-empty and the water is our tears’ one. Yet we can’t help respecting its uncompromisingly blunt message. Experiencing how an animal’s life can be destroyed by deforestation is galvanizing enough to get us recommending getting involved with a reforestation organization like Ecologi.

We’ve written about Ecologi before, way back in 2021 when we were still young beautiful, and covered the sublime Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. Ecologi has got loads of great, practical ways to help you become climate-positive and carbon negative. Writing about them again has also reminded me I needed to update my payment details, so thanks, Endling – technically, you just saved some trees! (From my laziness). Take a look at their official website by clicking this very sentence!

Gamesforest.club is a great idea. They’re working with games/creative industries to encourage them to ‘invest in carbon absorption via planting and protecting rainforests.’ And while I’m brazenly quoting from their website: ‘All restoration activities in real life will be shown in its digital twin, the Gamesforest.’ Yep, that globe pictured above shows everyone’s contributions! Click this link to find out how you can cover it in more forest.

Endling gets a shaky thumbs up from one of my hands (the other is busy speed-dialing my therapist). It’s a loud wake-up call that doesn’t shy away from the bleakness of what we’re doing to the world. I respect it wholeheartedly, but boy do I miss writing about Animal Crossing…

Endling: Extinction is Forever is available on Nintendo Switch, Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and my nightmares.

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?

Pop quiz! Does IPCC stand for…

• Irrational Pandas Con Chiwawas?
• International Panel on Climate Change?

Sorry panda crime fans, it’s the International Panel on Climate Change – but here’s the good news – They’re brilliant! A worldwide team of scientists, researchers, volunteers and more, working tirelessly to thoroughly assess the science of climate change. Basically, they’re super smart people who constantly warn us all that the Earth is getting too toasty. Thanks, IPCC 🙂

BUT WHAT IS THE IPCC FOR? WHO STARTED THEM? WHAT’S GOING ON?

1988 will go down as one of the most important years in human history. That’s right, it was the year that saw the release of the game Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja.

1988 will also go down in history as the year the IPCC was established by the United Nations. Their goal was to research how the climate was rapidly changing and provide information to governments that would (ideally!) affect their policies. They’ve spent the last thirty years-plus releasing comprehensive reports about how climate change is endangering the planet.

OH BOY. REPORTS. HOW FUN.

Yes, yes, fair point, but these reports matter! Every few years, and increasingly more recently, the IPCC releases detailed reports of where the world is at, where we’re headed, and what action we have to take to prevent devastating climate change. Unsurprisingly, they make for pretty grim reading.

Today, February 28 2022, is significant because Valve might email you saying you successfully pre-ordered the Steam Deck the IPCC just released their latest report, The Working Group II Report. We’re writing this on the Wednesday before the report dropped, so we’re gonna go ahead and assume the report says that everything is actually fine now and we can keep setting fire to all the oil (UPDATE: Well, drat).

DON’T DESPAIR!

So if it’s a report that contains almost as much bad news as the oceans contain plastic, what’s the point? Why don’t we all just stop trying?

Because climate doomerism, essentially giving up and deciding living life on fire won’t be so bad, is exactly what climate-change deniers want. If you give up, there’s no one to fight them. But giving up makes no sense at all! If you’re in the middle of a road and a car is coming towards you, you don’t give up when there’s still a chance to move out of the way! No, you lobby for the driver to use more efficient, climate-friendly methods of transport, so they hit you with a bicycle instead.

The IPCC aren’t releasing these reports to depress you. They’re meant to galvanize you. Your doctor doesn’t tell you to eat less pies between meals because they’re a jerk – they’re trying to help you make positive changes for a healthy future (the jerks). These reports are meticulously researched, endlessly peer-reviewed, and fantastic weapons for pressuring governments and corporations to take actual, meaningful action to address the climate crisis. They’re crucial evidence we need to take advantage of to save the planet. The science has always been on our side. We couldn’t be more in debt to the IPCC and the incredible work they do providing it.

YOU WANT SOLUTIONS? THE IPCC PROVIDES!

Yes, it’s not just page after page of polar bears weeping (stop that, polar bears! Sea levels are high enough already!). This latest report has solutions to help keep nature lovely and our overrated human society safer from extreme weather, those aforementioned sea levels, and other climate horrors. They’re not screaming “fire!” in a crowded theater – they’re trying to lead us all to the exit. And the play is called Climate Change is Great and all the stagehands work for Big Oil and actually we’ve lost track of this metaphor let’s move on.

THANKS IPCC! BUT I JUST SAID ‘IPCC’ OUT LOUD AND… WELL…

Yeah, it’s somewhat unfortunate that saying IPCC makes you sound like you’re bragging about peeing in the sea. They should really be called something like Saviors of the World – aka SOW! Oh. Wait. Pigs are red meat and that’s not always great for the planet. OK, how about For the Love of God Stop Ignoring Us Do You Want Your Grandchildren to Have Air – aka FTLGSIUDYWYGHA!

Catchy, but we reckon you could do better. Why not head over to the Climate Replay Discord Server? We’ll be debating better names for the IPCC, discussing the report, and helping clear up any questions you might have about who the IPCC are, what they do, and if Bad Dudes Vs. Dragonninja is worth playing today (it’s not). Thanks for reading and don’t give up the fight!

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. But there’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!

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!

SO HOW WILL THIS CHANGE CLIMATE REPLAY?

It won’t.

OH.

Exactly! All this means is that we’ll be promoting each other’s Discord servers, events and campaigns. If you’re a member of the Climate Replay Discord Server (and if you’re not, click this sentence to change that) expect to see us promoting Terra Firma and the wonderful work they’re doing. In fact, why not click this sentence and head straight to the Terra Firma Task Force Discord server? Snub Climate Replay and go straight to them! It’s fine. We’re not mad. Shut up we’re not.

While we calm down, check out the Climate Replay Discord here, and the Terra Firma Task Force Discord here.

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 and become 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.

Ready to start taking part in Climate Quests? Or just want to learn more? Click here to head over to our Discord Server and say hi! Have a lovely war everyone 🙂 ❤️

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!

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*. 

So click me, this very sentence you’re reading right now, to be taken to our Climate Replay Discord Server and start completing quests. Good luck!

…

…

…and go play The Great Ace Attorney! 

Sorry. I just couldn’t hold back…

Art by Mariana Salimena

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.

Podcast: How To Save A Planet

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…

Podcast: New Books in Environmental Studies

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.

Podcast: TILclimate

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.

Podcast: TED Climate

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!

Remember when I said I wanted your climate podcast/podcast game recommendations? I wasn’t lying – come join our Climate Replay Discord server and give us more pods please!