by Kristof Loppnow

“Im Wasserwald” is a 3D exploration game designed to bring players closer to activism. Modeled after a real forest occupation in Grünheide (Brandenburg), players can virtually explore the occupiers' camp. During this visit, photo stations continually reference the real-life camp. A radio report and atmospheric sound recordings (captured on-site) set the mood for the scene.

In the virtual camp, players meet some of the (fictional) inhabitants of the camp. They have small tasks to complete — and that means climbing! Many of the quest items are hidden in tree houses, so players learn one of the most important activities of the forest occupiers: climbing …

The game is designed to leave as small an ecological footprint as possible and to be accessible to as many people as possible. For this reason, the game was optimized to be playable on low-end hardware. This led to a unique, resource-efficient 2D pixel sprite look, with minimal textures, models, and effects.

itch: https://yxee.itch.io/wasserwald

by Sophie Kirchner

Do you want to take action yourself and make your city a bit greener? Maybe you've heard of guerilla gardening before. The game *Guerilla Gardening AR* allows you to gather inspiration for the real world. By planting various types of greenery, you can fulfill the need for more urban vegetation in a small city district and bring it back to life!

Guerilla Gardening AR is a combination of board game and augmented reality experience. The game board is made up of hand-drawn cards that depict parts of a city neighborhood from a top-down view, similar to a city map. Using an app, a three-dimensional city district with streets, buildings, and plantable areas comes to life in AR. Over three rounds, plants are sown on these spaces—though watch out, not every plant can grow everywhere. Since each card has specific needs for certain plants, strategic planning is required to fulfill as many of these needs as possible. Once you've succeeded, the neighborhood blossoms in new colors, and vibrant insects find a new habitat.

by Tony Wetzke

“Merana and the Cubewalker” is a story-based third-person puzzle platformer. You play Merana - a girl from a settlement who one day finds a cube. This lets us twist the world around us. Just like a Rubik's Cube, you can rotate the areas you are currently on.

You switch between two perspectives perspectives: the third-person view of Merana and the isometric top-down view of the world.

It was designed as a single-player game, as the focus is on the story. The game is aimed at a younger audience and fans of puzzle games.

• itch: tonywetzke.itch.io/cubewalker
• steam: link

by Michel Baldauf

BA:BEdI (Bürgerliche Anliegen: Bezirks-Entwicklung durch Initiativen / Civic Interests: District Development through Initiatives) is the concept for an online platform in the form of an app, allowing people to actively participate in reshaping their immediate surroundings. Users register with their postal code. Based on previously identified needs for future living, various 3D models have been developed to represent specific interests, which can be placed in one’s neighborhood using augmented reality. These placed interests are marked on a map, allowing other local residents to participate through the app. If there are enough supporters for a particular interest, a civic initiative is automatically submitted to the relevant authority. Thus, the BA app not only promotes democratic processes but also serves as an urban planning visualization tool based on residents' interests.

by Noa Kitzinger

“Leikas Traum“ (Laika's Dream) is a 2.5D story/puzzle game in which the player accompanies the Soviet space dog Laika on a surreal dream journey through space. After a turbulent take-off, Laika wakes up on a strange, unknown planet that seems to have a special connection to her.

On her journey across the planet, Laika meets a handful of other space animals who all used to live on Earth and, like Laika herself, have had a difficult past living with humans. Piece by piece, she learns the stories of these animals while trying to recover her own memories.

The aim of this game is to give players an insight into the world of animals. Is it fair how humanity treats animals? Under what circumstances do we cause animal suffering, and can we morally justify it for ourselves if the motives seem reasonable enough?

by Jannis Scheerbarth

Social media (SM) influences our perception in various ways and can affect our understanding and interactions with our environment, making mindful use of SM increasingly important. The project *@travelman3000* is a TikTok channel that explores the portrayal of travel content on social media, especially TikTok.

The videos, created with visual effects, offer an exaggerated depiction of travel content on the short-video platform and challenge how we engage with social media and our surroundings. Produced using a range of editing techniques (green screen, 3D, and 2D animation), the videos are a caricature of travel content on TikTok, allowing viewers to take a humorous yet critical look at the current social media landscape through realistic yet disorienting elements.

At the same time, viewers are encouraged to reflect on their own consumption and social media behavior.

by Lisa Lewandofski

Welcome to Solar Valley, the green city of the future. Here, people live in harmony with each other and with nature. Every resident actively engages in the community and is open to sharing about their life and profession. But they need your help. Outside of this idyllic life, there are dark places: the industries. They pollute the environment, and plants have no chance of survival.

Solar Valley is my sketch of the future. No one can predict what the future will look like. I’ve outlined my ideas in a sketch-like manner. The player journeys through the past, present, and future, as if in a drawing book. Along the way, you meet residents of Solar Valley who tell you about their work and life as solar punks. Some will give tasks like “pick up the trash” and “water the plants.” Through these small activities, the player helps create a better, greener future. These tasks and dialogues are also meant to encourage real-world change.

The application is designed as an app, currently developed only for Android.

by Valentin Behrendt

Welcome to Ecognomia !

The once vibrant diversity of this planet has been almost entirely displaced by a growth-oriented species. The race for resources covered the planet with factories and enveloped the world in ash. But there is a silver lining on the horizon: A small group of solar punks has not given up hope and is facing the growing challenges of this time. Will you help them?

Ecognomia is a building game that tackles the challenges of climate change. In a relentless wasteland, players face drastic weather fluctuations and environmental disasters to re-green the planet and convince the inhabitants to embrace a sustainable lifestyle. Along the way, they guide a solar punk commune from its founding to a thriving community.

by Christiane Possenig

*It Takes A Village* is a story-based exploration game created with Godot. In this game, structured as a retrospective narrative, players take on the role of a child in a fictional village that has been plagued by human-made and natural disasters and is now nearly abandoned.

The main objective of the game is to bring the villagers together and motivate them to make the place livable again, though only small changes will appear gradually within the game. The focus is primarily on motivating individual characters.

Players will see the results of this motivation in the game’s outro — a short animation set in the future, showing the child as an adult, telling a group of children about the restoration of the village and the surrounding land.

The game is inspired by real-world restoration projects like China’s Loess Plateau, Africa’s Great Green Wall in the Sahel, and the work of the Paani Foundation in India, focusing on themes of community and cooperation within the solarpunk genre.

by Haijun Yu

PRESERVING THE ENVIRONMENT WITH BATTERY RECYCLING

I have developed a game about recycling car batteries. Through this entertaining game, I want to draw people's attention to the problem of disposing of large quantities of old car batteries. Due to the Chinese government's support policies for electric vehicles, the market share of electric vehicles in China is now over 30%. However, if these batteries are not properly disposed of, they can pollute water and soil. It is expected that China will experience the first wave of decommissioned car batteries in 2025.

To protect the environment, more attention needs to be given to car battery recycling. I hope my game encourages players to think about battery recycling in a positive and entertaining way.

by Pelin Bilger

THE OCEAN IS DROWNING… …in plastic. But like me at the beginning of my research, you might think that the biggest problem is visible on the surface, as we know it from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But what if I told you that only 15% of the plastic is on the surface of the ocean, 15% on the beach, and a whole 70% lies deep in the ocean? Such facts reflect just the tip of the iceberg.

In the learning app “Ocean Calls,” you will dive into the depths of this issue in a playful way. Using your finger, you control a garbage-collecting robot whale via the touchscreen and embark on a fascinating exploration of the ocean’s depths. The simple controls make the app accessible to both young and old.

Alongside you are accompanied by a scientist, providing valuable knowledge.Get swept away, discover new depths of a life with less plastic, and learn how every contribution counts in protecting our oceans.

by Alla Boytsova

The solarpunk movement is increasingly unfolding its potential, not only from an ecological perspective but also a creative one. The opportunity to design utopian visions of the future aligns perfectly with one of solarpunk’s core principles – do no harm. With my project, I want to give people the chance to develop their own visions of the city of Halle. Based on three inconspicuous locations in the city, such as Riebeckplatz, the marketplace, and Neustadt Passage, anyone can contribute their idea of what these places could look like after renovation. This application aims to make each of us think about how technology can coexist harmoniously with nature.

This interactive application is very easy to use. One simply selects one of the three sketches of places in Halle, colors it, and scans it with a scanner. As a result, they can see how the video of the selected location changes, ultimately displaying their own drawn image of the place within the video. This makes it possible to instantly transfer the image from the real world into the digital world, from a small sketch on a piece of paper into a utopian world of animation.

by Nils Greiner

A Story in Between is a point-and-click adventure game with simple controls for solarpunk enthusiasts. The game prototype is fully hand-drawn and animated frame by frame, giving it a detailed, charming look. Interaction is solely through the mouse, with no keyboard needed. The entire game can be played using just the left mouse button, though the mouse wheel can assist with interacting with the inventory.

The game tells the story of the writer Francesco, who, in a utopian future, is trying to document the past. He wants to discover and record how humanity used technology and science to step into the future without ending up in a dystopia. To achieve this, he sets out to conduct interviews with people who contributed to this transitional period.