The Climate Trail: Survival game pits
players against climate catastrophe
The developer wants to tap into people's emotions to teach
them about the risks of unchecked climate change.
"The Burn,” years of uncontrollable and widespread wildfires fueled by prolonged drought and unrelenting heat across the globe, has devastated much of the United States.You’re trapped in a survivor camp in the ruins of Atlanta along with thousands of other climate change refugees, and the only path to relative safety is due north into Canada.You set off with a small band of people, among them
Katherine, a former climate scientist;
Albert, a hardened Army veteran of the Resource Wars; and
Bonnie, whose parents died from the plague when permafrost melted, releasing the disease back into the environment.
You provision your group with water, food, and a portable and valued currency, sorghum seeds, and begin an uncertain journey.
So begins “The Climate Trail“, a free (and ad-free) video game released this past fall that leaps from the pages of today’s climate change news and into a postapocalyptic future said to lie just a few decades ahead of us. It can be played on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows.
“The Climate Trail” was created by William Volk,..
As he developed the game, Volk says he thought of the Cormac McCarthy novel The Road, in which an unnamed catastrophe – maybe nuclear war, maybe the extreme consequences of climate change – have led to environmental ruin. He also was inspired by a fictional short story titled “A Full Life,” in which a teenager named Rue has her world unravel when she and her parents become climate change refugees. The story appeared in MIT Technology Review in a special issue on climate change in April 2019.
