Games can provide a practical way of exploring complex sustainability challenges. By creating safe spaces for experimentation, they allow individuals and groups to test decisions, experience consequences, and reflect on different pathways for change. In this sense, games can support social learning, systems thinking, and facilitated dialogue in ways that complement more traditional approaches.
By immersing players in interactive scenarios, games encourage exploration, critical thinking, and the application of ideas in new contexts. Computer games, in particular, make players active stakeholders in the challenges they face on-screen. Increasingly, games are being developed to support learning about sustainable development, helping people engage with real-world issues in an interactive and enjoyable way. Beyond their educational benefits, these games are enjoyable to use.
The examples below include games and platforms that can be used in learning, teaching, and facilitation settings to explore sustainability challenges in an interactive way.
Playing for Change: How Games Can Help Save the Planet
This 2019 article by Vitaliy Soloviy explores how gamification is reshaping sustainability efforts, from climate-conscious game design to real-world applications. It highlights the role of games in fostering environmental awareness, simulating complex global challenges, and inspiring action. Featuring examples like Eco, Minecraft’s climate mode, and World Climate negotiations simulation, the piece examines how serious games and gamified challenges can drive meaningful change in both digital and real-life sustainability efforts.
Facilitating sustainability transition through serious games: A systematic literature review
This 2019 study by Marios Stanitsas and colleagues examines the role of serious games in sustainability education, analysing 77 games designed to enhance understanding of sustainable development strategies. Using a systematic literature review, the authors categorise these games according to the triple-bottom-line framework, offering insights for educators and practitioners seeking effective tools for sustainability learning. The paper highlights both the potential and limitations of serious games in fostering holistic knowledge and proposes a research agenda for future game development.
Games4Sustainability platform
The Games4Sustainability platform offers a curated collection of sustainability-focused games and simulations. Explore their blog for real-world stories from sustainability professionals, academics, and organisations using games in their work. Their Gamepedia features 100+ games aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, helping users find the right game for their needs.
The fish game
Developed by the Cloud Institute, this game challenges players to manage a fishing economy over 10 days. The goal is to balance immediate financial needs with long-term sustainability. Each fish caught earns $2, but overfishing may leave future generations with dwindling resources. This engaging simulation highlights the real-world tension between economic survival and environmental responsibility.
Eco
Eco is a multiplayer simulation game where players collaborate to build a civilization within a fully simulated ecosystem. Every action taken affects the environment, requiring players to consider the ecological impact of their decisions. The game emphasizes sustainability, as players must balance development with environmental preservation to prevent ecological disasters.
Cities: Skylines – Green Cities
Green Cities is an expansion for the city-building game Cities: Skylines. It introduces over 350 new assets, including eco-friendly buildings, organic shops, electric vehicles, and new services aimed at reducing pollution. Players can design sustainable cities by implementing green policies and technologies, balancing urban development with environmental considerations.
Minecraft: Education Edition – Sustainability City
Sustainability City is a module within Minecraft: Education Edition that allows players to explore various aspects of sustainable living. From managing waste and generating clean energy to responsible forestry and sustainable home design, players engage in interactive lessons that highlight real-world environmental challenges and solutions.
BBC Climate Challenge
Developed by the BBC, Climate Challenge is a web-based strategy game where players assume the role of the leader of the European Union. The objective is to implement policies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions while maintaining energy, water, and food resources, and retaining public support. The game provides insight into the complexities of policymaking in the context of climate change.
If you’re interested in how these kinds of tools can be used in practice, you may also find it useful to explore other areas of the site. These include systems thinking and complexity-aware approaches, social learning, facilitation and collaborative processes. Together, these offer different ways of working with the kinds of challenges that many of these games are designed to simulate.
[* Photo: AzmanJaka – istock]