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Video games reflect environmental concerns in different ways: some make climate change the plot, others build human-nature relationships into their worlds or mechanics, and some let players explore restoration or real climate data. Those approaches can make environmental issues tangible, but reach and engagement alone do not prove that a game changes lasting attitudes or behavior.
What counts as an environmental story in a game?
Environmental themes in games predate today’s climate conversation; their framing has shifted alongside environmental science and public understanding. A game does not need to name climate change to reflect how people relate to nature. Its setting, resource systems, conflicts, or consequences may carry that theme implicitly.
It helps to distinguish four approaches: an explicit environmental plot, an environmental setting or system, play centered on restoration, and interactive experiences built from real-world climate data. These are useful ways to compare examples, not a universal published classification.
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- Cause: Does the game name an environmental cause, or leave it implicit?
- Form: Does the theme appear in the story, world design, mechanics, or an activation within a larger game?
- Issue: Is the focus climate change, biodiversity, pollution, migration, food access, or ecosystem restoration?
- Agency: Does the player explore, restore, act individually, or cooperate with others?
How different games bring environmental concerns into play
The examples below show why “environmental game” is not a single genre. The cited descriptions identify each game’s approach; they do not establish that every player will interpret it in the same way.
#1 Best Overall
| Game or experience | Environmental focus | How it reaches the player |
|---|---|---|
| Terra Nil | Ecosystem restoration | Restoration is the central play activity rather than simply a backdrop, according to the Climate Resilience Center. |
| Koral | Ocean ecosystems and climate change | The Climate Resilience Center describes it as drawing attention to corals, ocean life, and less visible aspects of climate change. |
| Usoni | Climate migration | Jiwe Studios’ game is described by the Climate Resilience Center as critically reclaiming and reframing climate-migration narratives. |
| Out and About | Sustainable food access | Yaldi Games’ project connects digital and local communities around food access amid rising food prices and soil erosion, as described by the Climate Resilience Center. |
| Daybreak | Collective climate response | CMYK’s cooperative game asks players to confront climate response together while presenting a better future as difficult but possible, according to the Climate Resilience Center. |
| Away: The Survival Series | Climate crisis and changing landscapes | A 2022 UN Environment Programme (UNEP) account describes players controlling a sugar glider surviving in a changing landscape affected by the climate crisis. |
When the theme is carried by a familiar series
A 2025 peer-reviewed article argues that main-series Pokémon narratives show increasing acknowledgement of climate change and human environmental impacts over time, alongside a hopeful vision of adaptation. That is the article’s interpretation, not a settled consensus about the series.
When a major game hosts a real-world activation
UNEP’s 2022 account describes environmental activations in larger games: a tree-focused feature in Monument Valley 2, Earth Day clothing in Pokémon GO, a reforestation theme in Pac-Man, and tree-decoration purchases in June’s Journey tied to a developer tree-planting effort. These are historical examples, not confirmation that the features or commitments remain active today.
Rank #2
How Climate Station differs from a fictional game
Climate Station is an interactive climate-data experience, not a conventional fictional game. Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Vice President of Environment, Social, and Governance, Kieren Mayers, describes it as a free PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2 application using IPCC models, NOAA records, and NASA imagery.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesIn Sony’s description, the approximately 30-minute experience has three acts: a global weather visualization; 120 years of temperature observations mapped across 20,000 points; and five possible futures based on IPCC emissions pathways. These are details in the company’s account, rather than an independent assessment of the experience. Mayers frames the idea this way: “Climate change should not feel like a lecture: learning through play.”
Rank #3
Can games teach players about the environment?
Games can put players inside a story or system: the player may see a changed landscape, work through restoration, or explore how emissions pathways relate to possible futures. UNEP’s Chief of Youth, Education and Advocacy, Sam Barratt, said, “This medium has incredible reach and agency.” But the available figures need to be read according to what they measure.
- A 2022 Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Unity survey interviewed 2,034 US adults aged 18 or older who play video games. Interviews took place May 30–June 7, 2022; this is a US gamer sample, not a measure of global opinion or current attitudes.
- UNEP’s 2023 account of the Playing for the Planet Alliance reported that alliance members reached 636 million players in 2022 and cited a survey of 380,000 gamers. These figures describe reported reach and survey participation, not a count of people proven to have changed behavior.
- Barratt said the alliance survey found a 10 per cent uptick in knowledge around environmental themes through games. That reported result is not, by itself, evidence of durable knowledge, a causal effect, or later action.
- In the same 2023 interview, Barratt cited an estimate of 3.1 billion people who play games. That is a global reach estimate, distinct from the Yale/Unity US survey.
UNEP’s account also cautions against treating engagement as proof of impact: Barratt said it was “still too early to be unequivocal” about effects on attitudes and action. Audience reach, in-game participation, knowledge reported in a survey, fundraising or planting outcomes, and independently measured lasting behavior are different kinds of evidence.
Rank #4
How to judge an environmental game’s message
Rather than asking whether a title is simply “about climate,” consider what the player actually sees and does. A story may name a cause directly; a world may invite an environmental reading without naming one; restoration play may make repair the objective; and a data experience may visualize observations or modeled futures. Looking at the game’s issue, mechanics, and form of player agency gives a clearer account of what it communicates without assuming that play alone produces real-world change.
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