Catalog

Card and board games for bringing comprehensive sexuality education (ESI) into the classroom. Cíclique deals with menstruation; its author presents it as the only Argentine game on the subject.

Shows a small publishing industry tied to a public policy.

Cards and board; Sexuality education, menstruation; Commercial

Five games to print and cut out at home about comprehensive sexuality education: a lotería of diverse families, a map of rights, dice for inventing stories, a “Guess Who?” featuring women and men who defend human rights, and a sexual health dictionary. The Ministry of Education declared it of educational interest.

Public sexuality education material that circulates outside the market, now in the middle of a contested policy.

Printable; Sexuality education, rights; Free

Un mundo sin vos is a Bitsy story told by a cat searching for María, her human companion, who was disappeared during the last dictatorship. It begins during the preparations for the 1978 World Cup and shows a world that carries on as if nothing were missing. It touches on surveillance, the appropriation of babies, and the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

It came out of the Ex-ESMA Jam, the first game jam for human rights and memory, organized by Women in Games Argentina. The jam as a whole could have its own entry.

Bitsy; Enforced disappearance, 1978 World Cup; Browser

Huellas Azules is a board game that follows the route of Toki Kallfükura. Teams advance by answering questions with one deck of characters from the territory and another of the territory's forces: sun, water, wind, volcanoes. Fernando Barraza, a member of the Mapuche people, took part in the design together with a Mapuche illustrator. It is being tested in schools in the city of Neuquén and is not yet for sale.

Title in Mapuzungun and Mapuche participation in the design, not only as a theme.

Board game; Mapuche territory and culture; In schools

Prison X is a virtual reality experience set in the San Sebastián prison in Cochabamba. La Jaguaresa, an Andean goddess, welcomes the player into a world that mixes Quechua mythology with characters based on real people. Its team, made up mostly of Indigenous women, calls it the “cholaverse.”

Quechua and Aymara authorship; it premiered at Sundance 2021.

Virtual reality; Prison, Andean mythology; Festivals

Boal systematized the Theatre of the Oppressed in dialogue with Paulo Freire's pedagogy. This book gathers more than 400 games and exercises to “de-mechanize” bodies and ideas. The network of centers that train “curingas” (jokers) is still active on five continents.

It is the Latin American matrix of play as a political tool in groups.

Contos de Ifá is a project of web games made by young people from a Candomblé terreiro. Ialorixás and babalorixás share stories; the young people turn them into drawings and scripts and program them with free software. The orixás are the characters, and they face problems familiar to Brazil's urban peripheries.

A sustained community methodology, with assets under a GPL license; it reached more than 600 people between 2015 and 2018.

Web games; Black youth, religious racism; GPL assets

Huni Kuin: Yube Baitana (“The Paths of the Boa”) is a platformer made together with the Huni Kuin people of the Jordão River, in Acre. It follows two twins born from dreams sent by the anaconda Yube: one trains as a healer and the other as a master of kene, Huni Kuin graphic design. It can be played in Hãtxa Kuin, Portuguese, Spanish and English.

It is the most cited case of Indigenous co-creation in the region, and its coordinator discusses authorship and the circulation of knowledge in writing.

Video game; Indigenous self-representation; Pay what you want

ARIDA is a survival game set in the sertão of Bahia in 1896, during a drought and on the eve of the Canudos War. You play as Cícera, a young peasant woman searching for water in a land marked by scarcity. The team traveled to the Canudos region to portray the landscape.

A Northeastern story of state violence told from the Northeast; awarded at Gamepólitan 2017 and nominated at BIG Festival.

Video game; Sertão, drought, Canudos; Commercial

A card game that introduces the orixás of African-rooted religions to counter religious racism. It began as an undergraduate thesis in Design and draws on Law 10.639/2003, which makes the teaching of Afro-Brazilian history and culture mandatory.

An anti-racist game that came out of design education.

Cards; Religious racism, orixás

The Landless Rural Workers' Movement launched this cooperative game for its 40th anniversary. The goal is to reach popular agrarian reform without leaving anyone behind, gathering seeds to “sow the future.” The spaces illustrate milestones of the movement: the first school, the flag, the anthem, the cooperative funds.

A mass social movement tells its own history in the form of a game.

Cooperative board game; Struggle for land; Commercial

A card game in which players put milestones of Brazilian LGBTQIA+ history in chronological order. It was launched by Casa 1, an organization that shelters LGBTQIA+ young people thrown out of their homes, with an open tournament in August 2025.

It uses the same timeline mechanic as Crónicas del Estallido, here for the memory of LGBTQIA+ struggle.

Cards; LGBTQIA+ memory

A narrative game inspired by real accounts of detentions during the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985). Free download for Windows.

A game about the memory of the dictatorship made by a public university and freely accessible.

Narrative video game; Memory of the dictatorship; Free

Tramar, by the Colectiva Las Fieras, grew out of a 2020 report on how the law permitting abortion on three grounds is applied in health centers on Chiloé. On a circular fabric board, three to five people read fictionalized testimonies from real cases and decide together how to accompany and where to refer: the clinic, midwives, the courts or feminist organizations. The 30 copies of the first edition were donated to community health centers.

It turns a feminist monitoring report into a tool for community accompaniment.

Fabric board game; Abortion on three grounds, gender violence; Donated to health centers

A stealth game in which a young couple joins a resistance committee after the 1973 coup. It recreates the attack on La Moneda and gives more weight to handling information and identities than to combat. Olivares based the protagonists on his parents' story.

Released on the 50th anniversary of the coup, with international coverage. It includes torture: it needs a content warning.

Video game; 1973 coup; Commercial

Reconstrucción follows Victoria, who returns after fifteen years to a town in the Urabá region of Antioquia. Depending on her decisions, she ends up as a community leader resisting a paramilitary siege, as a displaced person, or inside an armed group. The script draws on interviews with victims and with former members of guerrilla and paramilitary groups.

Some 15,000 downloads and an academic reading as a “virtual memory space.”

Mobile video game; Armed conflict, displacement

A game for young people built around ethical dilemmas of the armed conflict; one of them is whether to hand unarmed insurgents over to the justice system or report them as killed in combat. It has four characters (a civilian, a soldier, a young man recruited by paramilitaries and a female guerrilla fighter) built from 19 interviews.

It brings the logic of the “false positives” into a game. There is still no public download.

Educational video game; False positives, IHL; No public download

A mobile game about the armed conflict in the Colombian Amazon, told through four roles: an Indigenous leader, a soldier, a teenager and a rural teacher. It was built from more than 70 testimonies gathered in the field.

The fact that it was made together with the Navy raises the question of who narrates memory. Better as a case for discussion than as a model.

Mobile video game; Conflict in the Amazon; Free download

A board game on preventing gender-based violence and on sexual and reproductive rights, designed with rural women from Cali, Palmira, Yumbo and Buga. It uses real-life cases and adapts rewards and challenges to life in the countryside.

Board game; Gender-based violence, sexual rights

A manual of group dynamics, games and experiential exercises that circulated in unions, base ecclesial communities and neighborhood organizations across the region.

It is the core playful repertoire of Latin American popular education.

Method; Popular education; PDF

A first-person shooter in which the player accompanies the rebel troops from the landing of the Granma (1956) to 1959. It was made by a state team.

Ludic memory produced by a state; it is useful for discussing where activism ends and propaganda begins, just like Rescatando a Espert.

Shooter; Official memory of the Revolution; —

It takes its name from Siqueiros's mural in Los Angeles, covered with white paint in 1932. You play as the sole survivor of the El Mozote massacre (1981), in El Salvador, gathering evidence so that there can be justice for your village. It is bilingual.

An early precedent of Central American memory made from the diaspora, preserved by Rhizome.

Web game; El Mozote massacre; Archived

In Vagamundo, Cantinflas goes through three levels of assimilation as an undocumented worker in New York; at the end you have to choose between discriminating against or helping those who arrive after you. A geography of being combines a video game with networked kinetic sculptures, based on interviews with two undocumented young people.

A pioneering work of Latino art games in the US. Vagamundo depends on Flash.

Flash game; Migrant labor; Requires Flash

In Borders you have to cross the border desert, dodging the Border Patrol and staying hydrated. When someone dies, their skeleton stays fixed in that spot for those who play afterward, and the desert gradually fills with remains.

Persistent death is an argument made with the rules; it was published on itch.io on July 4, 2016, and received wide coverage in 2017, when it was exhibited at Lamar University.

Video game; Mexico–US border; Download

A mobile game in which you defend Indigenous territories against the installation of oil wells. Besides Yasuní, it includes conflicts in the Niger Delta, Alaska and the North Sea. The proceeds supported communities opposing extraction on their lands.

An early precedent of an environmental justice game made by an NGO, in the midst of the Yasuní-ITT debate. The app stores may be down.

Mobile video game; Oil extractivism; Stores possibly down

A version of the traditional game about what migrant children and adolescents go through in transit across Mexico, with information on safer ways to travel and on self-care. It includes a box, board, cards and a video tutorial.

A popular, inexpensive format serving an at-risk population.

Printable; Migrant children; Free

Mulaka is an action-adventure game set in the Sierra Tarahumara, populated by beings from Rarámuri mythology. The studio worked with anthropologist Enrique Servín, consulted cultural governor Marcelina Bustillos and announced that part of the profits would go back to the community.

It is the most visible case of an Indigenous theme in Mexican commercial video games, and it is useful for discussing the difference between consulting and sharing authorship.

Video game; Rarámuri worldview; Commercial

A lotería in Mixtec with Spanish translation, made from children's drawings after nine months of workshops in the community. The cards show traditional medicine, flora, fauna and ritual elements. The games were donated to be sold in craft shops and community museums.

It reappropriates the Mexican lotería for an Indigenous language, with the community as co-author.

Lotería; Mixtec language; Community sale

In May 2020, in the middle of lockdown, Mexican women players staged a protest inside Animal Crossing: New Horizons over the femicide of Diana Carolina Raygoza, a 21-year-old law student. They filled an island in the game with signs demanding justice and safety for women.

It is a case of tactical use of a commercial platform, which the site's definition includes.

Protest in a commercial game; Femicide; —

A mobile game based on the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (1552), which tells the story of the conquest from the Tlaxcalan point of view. You play as an Indigenous warrior, male or female, across eight levels, first against Spanish soldiers and then against the Mexica. It reconstructs languages and landscapes and gives women warriors such as Tecuelhuetzin their own avatar. It was released on the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan.

It challenges the idea of the Tlaxcalans as “traitors”; historian Federico Navarrete took part in reading the lienzo as an alliance.

Mobile video game; The conquest seen from Tlaxcala

A father and daughter travel along the Pantepec River, building a territory with illustrated tiles. Sara Scarlett Pérez made it to process the deaths of three relatives and her family's displacement from Tuxpan. It was presented in UNAM's Laboratorios de Paz program and is at the fundraising stage.

Family memory of violence in the Huasteca, worked into a playable territory. Its author founded the Red Lúdica Nacional (2024).

Tiles; Memory, displacement, Huasteca; Fundraising

A board game, with an online version, about the wage gap, disability and unequal access to education, health and employment. It was accompanied by community activations in Ciudad del Este, Caaguazú, Encarnación, Villeta and Villa Elisa.

One of the few Paraguayan games about inequality with public circulation.

Board game and web; Inequality, disability; Online

A woman returns to her region in the Peruvian rainforest, next to the Sarcophagus of the Tiger, where climate change has left archaeological pieces exposed. As she collects them she begins to want to keep them, and the game turns that desire into a dilemma: preserve or loot one's own heritage.

First place in the Cultural Heritage Game Jam 2021; it addresses huaqueo (grave looting) through the player's own ethics.

Video game; Huaqueo, climate change; Free

A GM-less horror role-playing game. In “some Latin American country,” the army secretly hires mediums to remove the spirits of victims from crime scenes.

It approaches enforced disappearance through horror, in an independent role-playing format.

Role-playing game; Enforced disappearance; Pay what you want

In the midst of the 2017 wave of protests, the jam brought together 14 short games about scarcity, hunger and repression. Vzla2017 recreates the protests with news segments; Tengo Hambre asks players to spread the word about the deaths and the hunger.

The jam as a fast, collective response to a political moment. These are openly opposition games

Game jam; Protests, hunger; Free

Skins is a series of workshops in which Mohawk teenagers from Kahnawake learn to make video games based on their community's stories. Otsì! is its first result. It is the closest model to Andean Futures.

A multicolored square moves through a maze, and the others attack it when it looks different. It can blend in, but then the camera smothers it. An abstract mechanic for talking about passing and trans identity.

Video game; Passing, identity; Source code

A Facebook game whose actions were linked to real donations to women's rights organizations. It is the reference case for the “social game + philanthropy” model.

Social game; Women's rights; Closed

It was made in 12 hours, with a special needs educator as an adviser. The player walks through a children's playground. When approaching noisy children, the image pixelates and the screams get louder. Moving away toward quiet areas reduces the overload. Some autistic people recognized their own experience; others said it did not represent them.

It is a case of a "disability simulator" made from the outside; critics pointed out that it reinforces pity and the medical model as opposed to the neurodiversity paradigm.

First-person browser game; Autism, disability; Free (demo)

A GM-less role-playing game about a post-apocalyptic queer community.

GM-less role-playing game; Post-apocalyptic queer community; 2014 prototype free

A singing game in Anishinaabemowin with songs to the water composed by Anishinaabe elders. It links language sovereignty with the defense of water.

Video game; Water and Anishinaabemowin; iOS

A journey in time to a future Toronto: Nathan Phillips Square is flooded, nature has reclaimed the city and people get around by canoe. Participants explore the place and find texts in Wendat, Kanien'kéha and Anishinaabe. The region's Indigenous languages appear as a way to think about one's own place in history.

Indigenous futurism in VR; it won best interactive work at imagineNATIVE and the Canadian Screen Award for immersive experience, and it was selected for Tribeca 2018.

Interactive virtual reality experience; Indigenous futurism, Indigenous languages, city and nature; Exhibition (NFB)

After a climate disaster, settlers and an Indigenous community from Earth experience a "first contact" in a post-apocalyptic future. Two people play on a split screen that merges when the characters meet. They talk to people and objects and choose responses. The game can only be finished by arriving together. It explores the gray areas between Indigenous and settler perspectives.

It won the award for best emerging digital work at imagineNATIVE 2019; it began as a master's thesis and links first contact to harms such as residential schools.

Two-player cooperative video game; First contact, colonialism, climate crisis, Indigenous futurism; Thesis project

Venba emigrates with her family from Tamil Nadu, India, to Toronto in the 1980s. The player reconstructs recipes from a damaged cookbook by trial and error. Food brings the generations together while her son, Kavin, assimilates quickly. The dialogue changes color depending on whether Tamil or English is spoken. The parents face rejection at work despite their education.

It won the IGF's Seumas McNally Grand Prize, the BAFTA for debut game and the social impact award at the Game Developers Choice Awards.

Narrative cooking game; Tamil migration, assimilation, family; Commercial

The story revolves around Iris Kwan, the daughter of an immigrant family in Canada. Her parents fled the 2019 and 2020 Hong Kong protests. The narrative deals with life in the diaspora, trauma passed from one generation to the next and the coronavirus pandemic. Critics highlighted how it addresses the experience of the Chinese diaspora.

It received a 2025 Peabody for interactive and immersive work; it was a finalist for the IGF Grand Prize and the Hugo.

Narrative science fiction video game; Chinese diaspora, Hong Kong protests, intergenerational trauma; Commercial

The Landlord's Game (1904), by Lizzie J. Magie, is a board game patented to show how the accumulation of land and rent impoverishes the majority. It was inspired by Henry George's single tax. Decades later, its design became Monopoly, and Magie's credit was erased for a long time. The patent, with its rules, is available online.

Board game; Rent and land monopoly; origin of Monopoly; Public domain

A board game conceived as a Marxist response to Monopoly.

Board game; Marxist response to Monopoly; Out of print

You choose a member of a displaced Darfuri family who must fetch water while evading the Janjaweed militia, and then sustain the camp for seven days. It won mtvU's Darfur Digital Activist Contest. By 2007 more than 1.2 million people had played it.

Video game; Genocide in Darfur; Original site offline

The player manages a poor Haitian family for four years, dividing time and money among work, health and school. Sending the children to school competes with eating. It came out of an after-school program run by Global Kids in New York.

Video game; Poverty, education; Probably offline

Cards about values in design; biases.

Cards; Values in design; biases; Buffalo can be tried free online

A simulation in which you govern as the prime minister of Israel or the president of the Palestinian Authority, seeking a two-state solution. What satisfies one group radicalizes another. It is used in peace education.

Simulation; Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Free since 2013

Between April and June 2007, a realistic oil crisis was simulated. Players imagined their lives under those conditions and documented them with videos, images, blogs, calls or emails. The organizers wove the best contributions into a daily narrative. Fictional characters commented on the stories and talked with the public. It was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

It is a precedent for the climate ARG; a 2015 study (Jafarinaimi and Meyers, CSCW) found that a few people dominated participation, which casts doubt on its promise of collective intelligence.

Alternate reality game (ARG); Oil crisis, energy, climate; Ended (2007)

A Tutsi mother hides with her baby during the Rwandan genocide; you have to type a lullaby in rhythm so the baby does not cry. It grew out of a Values at Play exercise.

Video game; Rwandan genocide; No download

Train (2009), by Brenda Romero, is a board game in which yellow pieces are loaded onto train cars following typewritten instructions. At the end, the players discover that the destination is a concentration camp. It is part of the series The Mechanic is the Message and is the reference case for mechanics as ethical argument.

Board game; Holocaust and complicity; One-of-a-kind work

A newsgame about the economics of Somali piracy: you command a boat, intercept a ship and negotiate the ransom. It is a widely cited example of a newsgame made by a major news outlet.

Newsgame; Somali piracy; Offline

A street vending simulation. You choose among three characters: Vinny sells bagels, Andrus runs a newsstand and Melanie, a coffee cart. You have to serve customers, set prices and buy supplies without neglecting food, sleep and health. Melanie, a single mother, is also trying to win custody of her daughter on a meager income.

It won the IGF 2013 Seumas McNally Grand Prize; it is a reference for games about precarious work.

Simulation; Precarious work, street vending; Commercial (on Steam since 2013)

A free game for young people around the world, with a focus on Africa. The story, set in 2020, follows a network of African "solvers." Each week there was a mission and a quest. Players formed innovation networks to propose solutions to development problems. The best received mentoring and scholarships to attend a summit in Washington.

It was made by an international financial institution and awarded the title of "Social Innovator"; it is useful for discussing who defines the problems of the Global South and in what language.

Online multiplayer game; Development, social innovation, African youth; Ended (10 weeks)

The player is a single parent who has just come out of unemployment. They must get through a month with 1,000 dollars and a minimum-wage job. Every decision about rent, utilities, food or health has costs that add up. The prices use real statistics from Durham. The design started from focus groups with social workers and service users. At the end it asks for a donation to the organization.

It passed 4 million plays by around 2014 and is used in university courses on poverty; it is also useful for discussing games as fundraising tools.

Browser game; Poverty, minimum wage; Free

A board game in which everyone wins or loses together. Its theme is cooperative businesses and a democratic economy. It seeks to displace the "winner takes all" logic. TESA, a worker cooperative, developed it over three years of collective play sessions, tests and revisions.

It was designed by the same collective behind Rise Up; it is a board game made by a cooperative for economic education.

Cooperative board game; Cooperatives, democratic economy; For sale

A cooperative game about abolitionism.

Cooperative; Abolitionism; Commercial

An autobiographical diary made of minigames about the first six months of its author's hormone therapy. Each chapter translates a feeling into a minimal interaction. It is a central work of the wave of queer personal games, and Anthropy rejected the label of “empathy game.”

Video game; Gender transition; Paid

A Twine fiction about confinement in a metal room, with brief escapes through a virtual reality visor. It was shown at the 2017 Whitney Biennial. It is the best entry point to the “Twine Revolution” that the site already mentions.

Twine; Confinement, trauma; Browser

A repeating day in the life of a young trans woman: getting dressed, walking to a café, paying, flirting or not with the barista. Other people's reactions change according to those small decisions. IndieCade 2013 official selection.

RPG Maker; Trans everyday life; Free

You work as an immigration inspector in a fictional state in 1982, with rules that change every day and a salary that has to cover your family. Checking documents under pressure makes everyday complicity with a regime palpable. IGF Grand Prize 2014 and Peabody 2021.

Video game; Borders, authoritarianism; Commercial

A Twine fiction about living with depression: when the character's state worsens, the healthiest options appear crossed out. In 2014, false accusations against its author unleashed the harassment campaign known as Gamergate.

Twine; Mental health; Pay what you want

A critical version of The Oregon Trail about crossing the Sonoran Desert. You can play as a migrant or as a Border Patrol agent. It is a model of a game as an extension of a documentary.

Video game; Sonoran border

A cooperative platformer based on a traditional Iñupiaq story, narrated in Iñupiaq and made with some 40 elders and storytellers. Upper One was the first Indigenous-owned video game studio in the US. BAFTA for Best Debut 2015.

Video game; Iñupiaq culture; Commercial

The player drags "unhappy" triangles and squares to empty spaces and watches segregation grow on a graph. A slider adjusts the shapes' bias. The lesson is that small individual biases produce large collective segregation. Lowering the bias does not undo existing segregation: diversity has to be actively sought.

It received wide press coverage in December 2014; it shows with a simple system how structural segregation works.

Playable browser explainer; Segregation, bias, structural racism; Free

A semi-cooperative game about urban insurrection.

Semi-cooperative; Urban insurrection; Commercial; paid print-and-play

A narrative adventure about a young photographer during the Iranian revolution. Iran blocked its distribution in 2016.

Narrative adventure; Iranian revolution; Commercial

Spirit Island (2017), by R. Eric Reuss, inverts the colonization game: the players are the spirits of an island who drive out colonial invaders. It is one of the few openly anti-colonial games at the top of the rankings, and how it represents the Dahan, the island's native people, is also debated (critical reading).

Cooperative; Anti-colonialism; Commercial

A cooperative game about social movements against “The System.”

Cooperative; Social movements against “The System”; Commercial

You play as a thunderbird flying from the tar sands to the Great Lakes, reviving animals and destroying oil infrastructure. It won at imagineNATIVE 2017. A state senator accused it of promoting “ecoterrorism,” and its author received threats.

Video game; Pipelines, water; Windows

A browser game in which a Black woman travels while swatting away the hands of strangers who try to touch her hair. A short game that names an everyday racial aggression.

Web game; Everyday racism

Mae drops out of college and returns to Possum Springs, a Rust Belt town whose coal mines closed years ago. The player walks around the town and talks with friends who live off precarious jobs. Mae's dissociation shapes the story. The plot reveals a cult that offers sacrifices to revive the local economy.

It won the IGF 2018 Seumas McNally Grand Prize and the BAFTA for narrative; it addresses deindustrialization and mental health from a working-class perspective.

Narrative video game; Deindustrialization, work, mental health; Commercial

It recreates Henry David Thoreau's first year at Walden Pond, in 1845. The player looks for food and firewood, maintains the cabin and clothing, and moves through the seasons. The game favors contemplation over strategy. It took some ten years to develop, with support from the NEA and the NEH.

It received "Game of the Year" and "Most significant impact" at the Games for Change festival; Walden EDU won gold at the 2022 International Serious Games Awards.

First-person video game; Ecology, simple living, Thoreau; Commercial; educational version Walden EDU

It is set in 1920s Harlem, during the Harlem Renaissance. The characters are African American investigators who face the horrors of the Mythos and, at the same time, the systemic racism of the era. The book confronts Lovecraft's own racism. The second edition adds a guide for handling racial themes at the table.

It won three golds at the 2018 ENnies; Spivey was among the Black professionals recognized by the 2020 Diana Jones Award.

Role-playing supplement (Call of Cthulhu); Racism, Harlem Renaissance, African American voices; For sale

An Indigenous response to The Oregon Trail: an Anishinaabe character is forced off their land in the 1890s and travels toward California. It was written by more than thirty Indigenous authors. Adaptation Award at IndieCade 2019.

Video game; Land dispossession; Free

The fictional corporation HappyCorp wants to turn Mercury City into a private metropolis with no minimum wage and no unions. The players form the STRIKE! Council, choose among eight worker roles and organize strikes to stop it. You win by scoring 15 points or removing five drones. The game openly declares itself in favor of labor rights.

It was commissioned by a national labor organization, and its Kickstarter campaign publicly supported the unionization of that same platform's workers.

Cooperative board game; Strikes, unions, privatization; For sale

A beat 'em up in which you control a growing crowd of workers; when someone falls, another picks up the flag. It was made by one cooperative and published by another.

Video game; Class struggle; Commercial

Dot, a young Black woman from Detroit, receives from her grandmother a key that opens doors to moments in the family's history. The player decides where and how to live in the face of redlining, urban renewal and gentrification. One of the decisions is whether to convince her grandmother to sell the house. It lasts about an hour and has several endings.

It was produced by an alliance of storytellers with housing and land justice organizations; critics described it as a game made by and for people of color.

Point-and-click narrative video game; Housing, racism, redlining, gentrification (Detroit); Free (Steam, itch.io, iOS, Android)

The player works at a supermarket where twenty coworkers have just been fired. To respond, they must organize their colleagues. That involves difficult conversations, building trust, channeling discontent and turning it into collective action. Its promoters presented it as the first union organizing video game. Its goal is to bring young activists closer to the labor movement.

It brings together a US labor NGO and the regional union federation of the Americas; its launch cites the youth protests in Chile and Colombia as context.

Interactive digital game; Union organizing, youth; Free

A card and map game about the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Cards and map; Ratification of the 19th Amendment; Commercial

Coyote & Crow (2022) is a role-playing game created by a Native American team led by Connor Alexander (Cherokee Nation). It is set in an Americas that were never colonized. Its crowdfunding campaign asked for 18,000 dollars and passed one million. It is today the most visible case of Indigenous futurism in tabletop role-playing.

Role-playing game; Americas never colonized; Commercial

A board game about British colonialism in India.

Board game; British colonialism in India; Commercial

A cooperative game about the climate crisis.

Cooperative; Climate crisis; Commercial

Each participant receives the identity of a person just released from prison. A simulated month is played in four 15-minute "weeks." Participants have to visit stations staffed by volunteers: ID, parole, fines, food stamps. They start with little money and unexpected costs come up, such as a 75-dollar arrest warrant.

It is the most widespread playful activity about incarceration in the US; it seeks empathy, but it is often organized by the penal apparatus itself.

In-person role-playing simulation; Incarceration, reentry after prison; Free, in person

A role-playing game in which the group runs unionization campaigns, strikes and contract ratifications. It offers a "menu of options" for learning the phases and tactics of organizing. The boss's lines come from real campaigns. Its author is a longtime union organizer in the SEIU service workers' union.

It is a training tool made from within the labor movement, not by an outside studio.

Role-playing game; Union organizing, strikes, collective bargaining; For sale

A turn-based strategy game set in Nazi Berlin. Each turn equals one week. You lead a small civilian resistance group with Jewish, Catholic, communist and patriotic members. The group hands out leaflets, paints walls, sabotages and recruits while evading the Gestapo. Four chapters run from 1933 to 1945. The game makes clear that the group cannot stop the war, only save a few lives.

It deals with everyday resistance rather than military epic; the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb) reviews it as civic education material.

Strategy video game; Memory; anti-Nazi resistance; Paid (PC, consoles, mobile)

An autobiographical adventure with a pixel-art Japanese RPG aesthetic. It recreates the escape of Abdullah Karam, a Syrian artist, from Hama toward the Turkish border. Karam comments on his own story in embedded videos. This first episode covers life before the war and the family's decision to leave. UNHCR published a short edition for schools.

It is migrant self-representation; the refugee is co-author and narrator, not a character designed by others.

Autobiographical adventure (RPG); Migration; refuge; war in Syria; Name your price (free)

A two-hour group activity for fifteen people or more. It starts from the average Belgian meal. A string connects the participants and makes visible the links between what is eaten and its effects elsewhere. Water, foreign debt, malnutrition, climate and working conditions in Costa Rica come up. Prior training is required to facilitate it.

It is a classic of French-speaking popular education and is lent out by regional centers in French-speaking Belgium.

Popular education activity; Food; consumption; North-South; Free download or €30; requires training

A satirical text adventure that circulated anonymously on cassettes. The player walks through Wenceslas Square during Palach Week, the protests commemorating Jan Palach's self-immolation. The square is full of police, tear gas and water cannons. One false step means death. The exaggeration of police violence works as a denunciation.

It is one of the clandestine activist games that documented the protests against the communist regime before 1989.

Text adventure; Protest; police violence; dissent; Free (web)

An investigative adventure set in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The player is the grandson of Jindřich Jelínek, arrested by the Gestapo after the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich. He interviews witnesses, compares diaries and pieces together the family history. It mixes actors, archival material and animated graphic-novel sequences. A playthrough lasts about two hours.

It grew out of a university research project; it won at A MAZE. Berlin (2018) and the Games for Change award for best learning game.

Narrative adventure; Memory; Nazi occupation; Paid (PC)

A narrative mystery set in a village in the former Sudetenland. The player arrives in the present and interviews postwar survivors. The order of the questions changes what is discovered. It deals with the expulsion of the German population, forced collectivization and the 1948 communist coup. One sequence simulates running a collective farm under party pressure.

It addresses an uncomfortable national memory; it won the award for best social impact game at Brazil's BIG Festival (2021).

Narrative adventure; Memory; expulsion of Germans; collectivization; Paid (PC)

A narrative game about childhood in war. It follows Anna, Mak and Melisa through two conflicts: the siege of Sarajevo (1992–1996) and the war in Ukraine since 2014. It shows daily life in a besieged city and repeated displacement. The stories are based on interviews and testimonies gathered with the Bosnian museum.

The memory comes from a Bosnian institution that collects testimonies from people who were children during the war. Note: as of October 31, 2026, only a demo is available.

Narrative game; Childhood in war; siege of Sarajevo; Ukraine; Free demo; game in development

A simulation of managing a family farm in an African country. The player tries to improve the family's standard of living over several generations. Bad harvests, corrupt officials, looting, civil war and price drops sink the family. The creators describe it as a model of the mechanisms that produce and sustain poverty.

It is an early newsgame used in schools. Made from the outside: it represents Africa from Denmark, and that deserves discussion in class.

Newsgame / serious game; Poverty; North-South inequality; Free (browser, Android)

A larp about a prison camp.

Larp; Prison camp; One-time event

A first-person walking simulator. In January 1938, a Republican soldier enters a ruined town hall in Francoist territory. There he finds the letters between Juan and Antón, two conscripted men who love each other. The setting is inspired by Teruel, the author's hometown. There is no combat. The game brings together repression, censorship and LGBTI+ memory.

It joins historical memory of the Civil War and queer memory in an independent work; more than 70% of its audience is Spanish.

Walking simulator; Historical memory; Civil War; LGBTI+ memory; Paid (PC)

Halat hisar (2013) is a larp created by a Finnish-Palestinian team that transposed the conditions of the occupation of Palestine to a fictional Finland, with a wall running through Helsinki. It lasted two days. The book Life Under Occupation (2014, free) collects texts by organizers and participants from both countries.

Larp; Occupation; Free documentation book

An adventure set in Sápmi and spoken in Northern Sámi, with yoik by Hildá Länsman. Almost half of the studio is Sámi-owned, and the traditional characters are acknowledged as the collective property of the Sámi people.

Video game; Sámi culture; Commercial

A messaging fiction: from Syria, Majd guides his wife Nour by chat as she tries to reach Europe. Playing it on a phone reproduces the medium through which migrant families stay in touch. Nominated for two BAFTAs in 2018.

Messaging fiction; Syrian migration; Commercial

The whole game takes place on a found phone. The player goes through messages, emails and photos to find out what happened to its owner, Sam. Clues in one app unlock another. Little by little it emerges that Sam is Samira, a trans and bisexual woman who was hiding her identity. It addresses the homophobia and misogyny of her surroundings. It was born at a game jam.

A European queer game with wide mobile circulation; its sequel, Another Lost Phone, deals with intimate partner violence.

Phone simulation game; Trans identity; LGBTQ+; Removed from Steam (January 2026)

A group workshop based on the IPCC reports. Participants arrange cards with graphs by cause and effect until they build a mural of climate change. Ringenbach tested it with students in 2015 using fifteen graphs. In 2018 he founded the association and trained the first facilitators. The material circulates under a free license.

It became a mass format for climate awareness. Note: it is also widely used in companies, which opens a debate about its political reach.

Collaborative card workshop; Climate change; Creative Commons license

A roll-and-move game created by two sociologists of the French elites. The board has 82 spaces, the average life expectancy in France, and ends in a tax haven. One player embodies the 1% and starts with five times more wealth. Players accumulate economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital. Texts in red explain the sociology behind each card.

It sold 10,000 copies in three weeks, in the middle of the pension strike.

Board game; Inequality; social class; Commercial

You manage the entire chain of a transnational hamburger company, from the pastures of the Global South to the corporate office. To keep it profitable you have to clear rainforest, displace peasants and bribe officials: the game does not punish those decisions, it makes them necessary. Pedercini called it an “anti-advergame.” It is Molleindustria's founding piece.

Video game; Fast food; Flash; download

An office worker repeats the same routine every day, and the game only advances when the player steps off the script. Each deviation leaves the world emptier. It is one of the most discussed art games of its decade about workplace alienation.

Video game; Workplace alienation; Flash; CC BY-NC-SA

Four sections trace the life of a phone: coltan extraction, suicides at Foxconn, planned obsolescence and electronic waste. It is played on the very device it denounces. Apple pulled it from the App Store within hours of its launch; the censorship page documents the case.

Video game; Smartphone supply chain; Flash; Android

A day in the life of a drone pilot who strikes targets thousands of kilometers away and goes home for dinner. The split screen puts a mechanical task (shaving, driving) side by side with the pilot's thoughts. Grand Jury Prize at IndieCade 2012.

Video game; Drone warfare; Flash

A management game without text in which surplus value, the industrial reserve army and the division of labor appear. It can end in bankruptcy or in an insurrection. Pedercini summed it up as “Richard Scarry meets Karl Marx.”

Video game; Automation and labor; Flash

A narrative road game along the Via Aurelia in 1978. The car moves forward on its own; the player adjusts the speed and chooses dialogue at the same time. Lella, the protagonist, is a feminist. Her companion Olga is traveling to France to have an abortion. The conversations touch on fascism, single motherhood and the mafia. Each playthrough lasts about fifteen minutes, and there are sixteen endings.

It puts the feminism of the Years of Lead at the center of a commercial game; critics gave it a divided reception.

Narrative driving game; Feminism; abortion; Italy 1978; Paid (PC, consoles)

A simulation in which you play on the side of the police or of the protesters. Aggressive tactics achieve quick objectives but damage public opinion. The scenarios recreate the Indignados in Spain, the Arab Spring in Egypt, Keratea in Greece and NoTAV in Italy. Menchiari experienced the NoTAV clashes in person.

The author comes from the movement it portrays; the dual perspective is both its wager and its most debated point.

Simulation / strategy; Protest; police repression; Paid (PC, consoles)

A larp about HIV/AIDS and the LGBTQ community, 1982–84.

Larp; HIV/AIDS and the LGBTQ community, 1982–84; Runs in several countries

The player raises a Lebensborn child in postwar Norway. These children were born to Norwegian mothers and German soldiers during the occupation. You have to care for the child at home with limited time and decide how to respond to the bullying they suffer at school. At the end of each chapter, the child's emotional state reflects those decisions. It was funded partly through Kickstarter and with Norwegian state support.

It won the BAFTA Game Beyond Entertainment award (2019) and opened up a little-discussed national memory.

Caregiving / narrative video game; Memory; Lebensborn children; bullying; Paid (mobile, PC, consoles)

A board game about scarcity in communist Poland. Each player moves five family members among the lines at different shops. They must complete a shopping list with few products available. The cards allow players to cut in line or buy under the counter. There is also a black market. It includes a historical booklet on the planned economy.

It won the 2012 Gra Roku and has been translated into at least eight languages. Partial counter-case: it is published by a state memory-policy body, and in 2016 rumors circulated that Russia would ban it.

Board game; Memory; scarcity in communist Poland; Commercial (Trefl since 2014)

Civilian survival in a besieged city, inspired by Sarajevo. In 2020 Poland added it to the optional school reading list, the first video game on such a list.

Video game; Civilians in war; Commercial

A board game about women's suffrage.

Board game; Women's suffrage; Printable; free on Vassal

A strategy game in which you set policies for the world's regions in the face of climate change, with scenarios based on scientific research.

Strategy; Climate change

A newsgame about the Syrian civil war that was updated as events unfolded. Apple rejected it three times for “targeting a real government,” and it entered the store in 2013 as Endgame: Eurasia, without the word Syria.

Newsgame; War in Syria

The player is a bouncer at bars in a post-Brexit United Kingdom governed by the nativist party Albion First. They check documents and enforce increasingly exclusionary rules. People of European descent have lost their citizenship and await deportation. If the protagonist's social credit drops, he is deported. He can collaborate with the government or with the resistance.

A direct satire of Brexit nationalism made from within the country; the press compared it to Papers, Please.

Simulation / satire; Brexit; nativism; deportations; Paid (PC, consoles)

A 45-minute game, the length of a class period, that goes through persecution, flight, asylum and integration. It includes testimonies and a teacher's guide. It is UNHCR's first game.

Video game; Refuge and asylum; Original site offline

Three visual novels about civilians during the 2022 Russian invasion. In Hostomel, you protect a group during the first airborne assault. In Bucha, you play as two brothers under occupation. In Mariupol, a surgeon keeps a besieged hospital running. The goal is to survive. The illustrations use real photographs of those places.

It was made by a Kyiv studio during the war and is distributed for free, without in-game purchases.

Visual novel; War; civilians; Russian occupation; Free (PC)

A 2D action RPG with real-time combo combat. Enzo, prince of Zama, loses the throne in a coup by his brother-in-law and travels the planet Auriona in search of allies. The world mixes Maasai, Tuareg, Yoruba and Fula references. Its authors describe it as a world where Africa was never colonized.

The first video game studio in Central Africa, funded partly through Kickstarter (€49,775 in 2015); a frequent reference for "afro-fantasy" as an allegory of African history.

Action RPG (PC); Afro-fantasy, imagined decolonization; Commercial (Steam)

A mobile tile-matching (match-3) game. A team of superheroes inspired by African folklore and history, such as Ananse and Shaka Zulu, fights crime and corruption on the continent. Leti Arts accompanies it with digital comics that develop each character's story.

The flagship franchise of one of the continent's pioneering studios; Eyram Tawia presents it as a response to the absence of Black superheroes and to stereotypes.

Match-3 mobile game + comics; Representation, stereotypes, corruption; Free (Android)

A multiplayer role-playing game set in Nairobi. Five strangers are brought together after a taxi hijacking and must recover a stolen object. The dialogue is in Sheng. The messages about HIV and safe sex are built into the plot, and in-game moderators act as peer counselors.

An early public health game in a local urban language. Production was mostly external (US studios), with Kenyan writing.

Multiplayer role-playing game (PC); HIV, sexual health; Free at youth centers in Nairobi

A "choose your own adventure" narrative game for low-cost phones, aimed at adolescents aged 11 to 14. Players guide six characters through adolescence, and their decisions affect relationships and health. It includes minigames and a section, "My Story," where each player sets their own goals. It aims to delay sexual debut and prevent HIV.

Piloted in western Kenya in 2017 and then tested in a randomized controlled trial in Kisumu. A coproduction with a US university and studio.

Mobile narrative game (Android); HIV prevention, adolescence; Research (clinical trial)

A mobile game launched ahead of the August 2022 general elections. The player chases a political leader down an obstacle-filled corridor and unlocks a mission each time they catch him. It deals with corruption, violence and hate speech. It is aimed at Kenyan men aged 17 to 35 so that they assess the integrity of their candidates.

Electoral civic education in a casual game format, within the "Gaming for Good" initiative. Usiku is owned by a Canadian investor.

Casual mobile game; Civic education, elections, corruption; Free (Android, iOS)

A narrative video game with missions and minigames, based on oral accounts from four villages on the Swahili coast. It deals with resistance to slavery and its relationship to the present. It was launched at Pwani University, in Kilifi, on the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade. Umoja means "unity" in Swahili.

Memory of slavery told from coastal communities. In 2024 the same team launched Usawa, about descent-based slavery. A coproduction with SOAS.

Narrative educational video game; Memory of slavery, Swahili coast; Educational (access not specified)

A 2D action platformer. Zau, a young shaman, makes a pact with Kalunga, the god of death, to bring back his father's spirit. It draws on Bantu mythology and on the stories that Salim's father, who grew up in Kenya, used to tell him. The game treats grief as something that also celebrates life.

Diasporic self-representation of Bantu cosmologies in a widely distributed production. Its purpose is more about identity than politics; its inclusion is debatable.

Platform video game; Bantu mythology, grief; Commercial

A phone adaptation of morabaraba, a Southern African board game also called umlabalaba. To advance in the game you have to answer questions about gender-based violence. The questions repeat across sessions to reinforce what has been learned. It targets adolescents and seeks to help them recognize violence, report it and question gender stereotypes.

It won AppCircus 2011 in South Africa and reached the final of the Mobile Premier Awards; it uses a traditional game as a vehicle for the UNiTE campaign.

Mobile game (quiz on a traditional board); Gender-based violence; Free (mobile)

A satirical Tamagotchi-style virtual pet, designed for a single session. You have to keep Jacob Zuma's hunger low and his energy and fun high. The minigames comment on the Marikana massacre, electronic tolls and opposition leader Helen Zille. It came out in the same election campaign as Flappy Zuma, in which the president dodges showers.

Electoral satire made in the country before the 2014 elections; Daily Maverick read Flappy Zuma as an allegory of citizens' powerlessness.

Satirical video game (PC/Android); Political satire, elections; Paid on PC; free on Android

A card and trading game featuring the puppets from the satirical show Puppet Nation ZA. Each player builds a political party and undermines their rivals "by any means necessary." There are influence, corruption and tactic cards, such as "Saxonwold Shebeen" or "Hawks Investigations," which allude to recent scandals in South African politics.

It brings television satire about corruption and patronage to the family table.

Card game; Corruption, political satire; Commercial

A free edition of morabaraba, a two-player strategy game. It was born at a game jam whose theme was combating institutional racism in game design. It seeks to restore the African origin of the game, which colonial discourse presented as a variant of "Twelve Men's Morris." It tells its history with bonzo-style comics and a tale about a water creature.

A concrete case of recovering a traditional game from its colonial appropriation, designed to be printed in schools.

Print-and-play board game; Reclaiming a traditional game, anti-racism; Free (itch.io)

A 2D platformer and heist game set in Johannesburg in 2099. Nomali and her crew recover 70 real objects taken from Africa to Western museums, such as the Benin Bronzes. Each heist has three phases: reconnaissance, search and a 30-second escape. The game provides the history of each piece.

It brings the debate over the restitution of colonial objects into a commercial game; the trailer asks whether it is theft to recover what was stolen, and critics were divided.

Platform/heist video game; Restitution of colonial objects; Commercial (Windows, Xbox)

A board game centered on isiXhosa, based on the mechanics of 30 Seconds. Players explain clues in several languages, recite clan names, sing and dance. Queen Nzinga, Chief Maqoma and the site of Mapungubwe appear. The board turns the Cape Town–Cairo route into a "decolonial map" of African rediscovery.

Explicitly decolonial analog design, centered on an African language and Indigenous ecological knowledge; it is not yet for sale.

Board game (prototype); isiXhosa language, African history, decolonial; Prototype, not for sale

A Candy Crush-style tile-matching game. Players match icons such as the continent in the party's colors, a fist, a warrior with a spear and drums. A caricature of Jacob Zuma appears at the start of each level and after each win or loss. Buying extra moves costs 500 in-game coins.

Counter-case: a party uses casual games as propaganda; the reception on social media was skeptical and mocking.

Match-3 mobile game; Party propaganda (counter-case); Free with in-app purchases

The player lives through a refugee's flight. You have to dodge hostile troops and obtain food, water and medicine to reach a place at peace. According to its author, in-game purchases go to real refugees. The protagonist is inspired by Mayen's mother, who saved for three years to buy him a computer.

Its author was born in displacement and raised for 22 years in a camp in Uganda; announced at The Game Awards 2019.

Mobile video game; Refuge, displacement; Free with in-app purchases

A branching "choose your own adventure" story for phone or computer, in English, Luganda, Swahili and French. You play as Goitse, Aisha or Dami, young African women who face doxxing, phishing, online dating scams, impersonation, the sharing of intimate images and harassment. It works as digital security training.

A game by an African civic technology organization about digital violence against women

Interactive web story; Digital violence against women; Free (web)

A short narrative game. It follows a girl from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) caught in the conflict with Azerbaijan. You move with the arrow keys and talk to people and objects. It speaks of redrawn borders, unpunished violence and international indifference. Its page frames it as a feminist, anti-colonial and environmental issue, with links to donations.

Selected for A MAZE. Berlin 2023; it shows the use of Bitsy as a tool for testimony.

Bitsy; War in Artsakh, displacement; Browser, itch.io

You defend 24 Tunisian cities from government forces with tanks. You place cannons and defenses to stop the troops. Earnings are invested in improving the revolution's arsenal and healing capacity. It came out in December 2010 as Defender of Arabia and was relaunched under this name in January 2011.

One of the first games about the Arab Spring; the press debated whether it celebrated or exploited the revolution.

Facebook strategy game; Tunisian revolution; Discontinued (Facebook)

It recreates the "Battle of the Camel" of February 2, 2011. That day, armed men on horses and camels attacked the peaceful sit-in in Tahrir Square. The player organizes the protesters' defense. It uses real recordings from the square and speeches by politicians from the first days of the revolution.

An Egyptian studio turns an episode of the revolution into playable memory, two years later.

Facebook tower defense; Egyptian revolution, Battle of the Camel; Discontinued (Facebook)

Bilal modified Quest for Bush, itself a hacked version of Quest for Saddam. He casts himself as a suicide bomber sent against George W. Bush. The work exposes the vulnerability of Iraqi civilians and the racial profiling of games such as America's Army. It follows Domestic Tension (2007), in which the public shot paintballs at him over the internet.

Censorship. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute closed the exhibition in 2008 after a campaign by Republican students.

Art mod; Iraq War, racial profiling; Artwork (exhibition)

A slow walk, without running or jumping, through an open-air digital museum. You find objects, testimonies and data about the oppression of women under Iranian religious law. It includes what happened after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022. The authors say they gathered stories "or lived them" as anonymous developers.

Anonymity is part of the work; it shows the cost of making games about "Woman, Life, Freedom."

Interactive documentary / walking simulator; Woman, Life, Freedom; gender oppression; Steam (Windows), US$7.99

It recreates Hezbollah operations against the Israeli army in southern Lebanon. The player fights soldiers, Merkava tanks and Apache helicopters across three missions. The training mode rewards shooting at posters of Israeli leaders. Hezbollah presented it as a response to foreign games in which Arabs are the enemy. A sequel about the 2006 war came out in 2007.

Counter-case: propaganda by an armed organization. It was sold in several Arab countries and condemned as a recruitment tool.

First-person shooter; Hezbollah-Israel conflict; Discontinued

It satirizes corruption and sectarianism after the October 2019 protests. The cards represent the bank, the judge, the gossipy neighbor or the sectarian thug. The player who most recently withdrew dollars goes first. If the thug forces a player to discard the Lebanese flag, that player must emigrate. The "mom" card alludes to the mothers' march of November 2019.

The first 500 copies sold out in two weeks, two months before the port explosion; there was strong demand from the diaspora.

Card game; Corruption, sectarianism, 2019 protests; Commercial (local print run)

A Star Fox-inspired spaceship game over a city under attack, made of the Ottoman houses of the Beirut of the author's childhood. After the port explosion on August 4, 2020, Nasser removed the enemies, bombs and explosions from the public version. All proceeds go to the reconstruction of Beirut.

A war game disarms itself as a gesture of mourning and solidarity.

Shoot 'em up; Beirut, port explosion, reconstruction; Pay what you want on itch.io (HTML5, Windows, macOS, Linux)

A father tries to get his daughter to safety during the 2014 Gaza war, dodging drones and missiles. Apple at first refused to classify it as a game because of its political content and reversed the decision after public pressure.

Video game; Gaza 2014; Free

More than 70 question cards, spread across six themes of unequal weight. Some point to what is urgent and others to the long term. It is played in pairs or in large groups, with facilitation, by writing and drawing. The goal is to imagine who would build a decolonized Palestine, what it would be and how, without requiring training in critical theory.

It was presented at The Mosaic Rooms (London) in 2021 as a tool for Palestinian futures from the diaspora.

Conversational card game; Decolonial futures for Palestine; Facilitated workshops; no verified sale

A short game, about fifteen minutes long, that remembers Palestinians killed in Gaza. The stories are inspired by the "Martyrs of Gaza" account and focus on their dreams, not their deaths. The player walks through destroyed buildings, reconstructed in 3D from photographs. Among them is Al-Ahli hospital.

The game went back into production in 2025 with volunteer support from the Palestinian Voices in Games network.

First-person narrative simulation; Memory of Palestinian victims in Gaza, destroyed heritage; Download on itch.io (Windows, macOS)

The successor to Halat hisar. In an alternate reality, Finland is occupied and the Åland Islands are an open-air prison under bombardment. It is an allegory of the siege of Gaza. After a two-hour workshop, participants live the routine: school, fishing, chess, protests, a wedding and the nightly risk of bombs. It includes video testimonies from Palestinians.

It continues the Palestinian-Nordic collaboration of Halat hisar, with Palestinian co-design.

Larp; The siege of Gaza as allegory; In-person runs

Players try to occupy zones of Ramallah marked as Areas A, B and C. Red "chaos" cards upend their plans. Israeli army raids appear, or the release of a friend's father. The characters are based on real people from different social classes in the city. It mixes humor, frustration and hope.

Palestinian design about the everyday and the absurd under occupation; it was exhibited at Comicon Napoli and is funded through GoFundMe.

Strategy board game; Everyday life under occupation in Ramallah; In development; GoFundMe

Two sides face off: the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising and the Likud government. Hamas acts as a semi-independent faction. Players recruit units and play with general strikes, nonviolent protest and intelligence. The Leadership can win through international pressure over human rights abuses. Israel loses if domestic support for its government collapses.

It models the First Intifada as a civil and diplomatic struggle, not only an armed one.

Card-driven wargame (1-2 players); First Intifada, civil protest, diplomacy; Commercial

Based on a popular story from the 1948 Nakba. You play as Omm, a mother fleeing toward Lebanon after her husband's murder in al-Tantura. In the panic she carries a pillow instead of her son. With the pillow in her arms she cannot climb or throw stones; if she lets it go, the nightmares appear. Each level alternates dreams in color with a present in gray.

A new project by the author of Liyla; other crowdfunding platforms rejected it, and it raised some US$244,000 on LaunchGood.

2.5D stealth video game; 1948 Nakba, memory, displacement; In development (Windows), release planned for late 2026

Under Ash follows Ahmad, a young Palestinian during the First Intifada. Under Siege follows a family during the Second Intifada (1999–2002), including the 1994 Hebron massacre and the battle of Jenin. Shooting civilians ends the game. Kasmiya states that the sequel is based on events recorded by the UN.

A complex case. It was among the first Arab attempts to respond to games that demonize the region. Kasmiya rejects the propaganda label, but it was criticized by hardliners on both sides.

First-person shooter; Palestinian intifadas; Discontinued

A woman, the "auntie" of the title, is watching television in her sixth-floor apartment. She sees unrest outside, and tear gas comes in through the window. She goes out to help the protesters and to stop provocateurs who are causing damage. You play by pressing the keys that appear above each person's head.

It was born at Game Developers Turkey's #GeziJAM, during the Gezi Park protests.

Action; Gezi protests; Download on itch.io (Windows, macOS, Linux)

A short political thriller set in an imaginary country where people rebel against a totalitarian state. You play as a police officer about to interrogate a young female protester. The author explicitly links it to the Turkish police and the Gezi protests. It contains graphic violence.

It puts the player on the side of the repressive apparatus to make police violence visible.

Narrative mod; Police violence, totalitarianism, Gezi; Download on itch.io (Windows)

In the first, an Afghan soldier clears Helmand of traffickers, mines and heroin labs. He also convinces farmers to swap poppy for saffron. In the second, a princess crosses territories and defeats wizards to free her parents. Both were made by all-female teams. Afghan Hero Girl sought to show that girls solve difficult challenges and deserve equal rights.

Games from the country's first coding school for women only; Fight Against Opium was based on the experience of Mohammadi's brother as a translator.

Mobile games; Drug trafficking, gender equality, girls' education; Free (mobile)

The player joins a guerrilla unit in the 1971 liberation war and fights the Pakistani army in the villages and rivers of Bangladesh. The sequel adds women guerrilla fighters, such as Anila, and missions to rescue civilians. In advanced levels players also attack collaborators from fundamentalist parties. Development received funding from the government's ICT Division.

A case of national memory with state sponsorship. It passed one million downloads; The Quint asked whether it was history or Awami League propaganda.

Third-person shooter for Android

Historical fiction about the memory of Sri Lanka's civil war. Its protagonist, a Tamil person with Alzheimer's, moves between past and future in a nonlinear narrative. The text alternates between two languages. Its tagline: "a game about remembering names, even when it is easier to forget."

One of the few games about Tamil memory of the civil war; it contrasts with commercial games that used that conflict as an action setting.

Bilingual visual novel (PC); Memory of the civil war, Tamil identity; Download (itch.io)

Each player represents a caste group: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas or Shudras/Dalits. Each group has its own objectives and ways of scoring. All seek to shape the future independent Indian state in their favor. The British are not playable: they function as a force to be resisted or to strike deals with against the other players.

First place in the 2021 Zenobia Award for historical games on underrepresented topics. Made in the US and still without a publisher.

Historical board game (prototype); Caste, British colonialism; Unpublished

Jala returns home and faces pressure from her family and her exes. The game mixes skateboarding, cooking minigames and turn-based battles within conversations. Decisions define her "Thirstsona," that is, her personality. It deals with LGBTQ+ identity, cultural heritage and family ties. The team framed it as a response to the scarcity of South Asian stories in video games.

Nominated for the BAFTA Game Beyond Entertainment and three D.I.C.E. awards; honorable mention for the GDC Social Impact Award.

Narrative adventure with turn-based combat; LGBTQ+ identity, family, cultural heritage; Paid

It takes place in Bhimra, a city-state in an imaginary ancient India struck by famine. You play as five ordinary people: a peasant woman facing an arranged marriage, a priest, a slum dweller, an ambassador and a mercenary captain. Objectives are pursued through dialogue, manipulation or violence. The plot addresses caste, discrimination, gender and social structures.

The Indian press counts it among the national independent games that put caste and discrimination at the center of the story.

Narrative RPG (PC); Caste, discrimination, famine, gender; Paid (Steam)

A mix of adventure, puzzle and role-playing for adult audiences. The player embodies a missing person, a victim of trafficking for sexual exploitation. They must make decisions and weigh risks to find a way out to freedom. Kejriwal and Chakraborty did research in the red-light districts of Kolkata and in rural Bengal. The project is linked to the Missing Link Trust, which Kejriwal leads against child trafficking.

NASSCOM award for indie game of the year 2016; more than one million downloads in 70 countries by 2021 and a sequel funded on Kickstarter.

Adventure and role-playing (mobile and PC); Human trafficking, child sexual exploitation; Free

Participants take on the roles of people whose lives differ from their own. They make everyday decisions under constraints of caste, class and gender. The rules draw on data from qualitative and quantitative field research. It is aimed at students, researchers and management professionals. It was created for the Gender Bender 2017 festival, produced by Sandbox Collective and the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan in Bangalore.

It works with the intersectionality of caste, class and gender using field data, from an organization that designs games for public policy.

In-person group game (up to 20 people); Caste, class and gender; Workshops

Each player leads a political party. In the manifesto phase, players debate policies for each constituency's problems; if the majority approves them, they gain influence. In the campaign, resources are spent on legal and illegal cards, such as fake news or pacts with the mafia. Caste is a mechanic: players mobilize castes or build alliances among them.

A playful satire of the Indian electoral system prepared for the 2019 general elections; it was promoted by a community radio NGO in Haryana.

Board game; Elections, caste, corruption, disinformation

A short first-person story within Somewhere, a larger project about the search for a mythical city called Kayamgadh. The player accompanies Iqbal, an inventor waiting for a call. While he waits, he remembers the history of the telephone in India and its first telephone mines. The studio combines postcolonial writing and hypertext to revisit structures of colonial power, borders and translation.

Humble New Talent Award at A MAZE. Berlin 2020; exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Jawahar Kala Kendra.

First-person interactive fiction; Postcolonialism, colonial history, borders; Free (Steam)

A third-person fighting game without firearms. Lieutenant Singh advances with fists and clubs through the Galwan Valley, the site of the 2020 border clash between India and China. It was announced after the ban on PUBG Mobile and Chinese apps, as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat campaign. It was promoted by the actor Akshay Kumar. It was released on Republic Day.

Two million downloads in three hours; critics spoke of "jingoistic" fervor. 20% of net revenue was to go to a fund for military families.

Mobile fighting game; Counter-case: nationalism, India–China border conflict; Free with purchases

Partition is experienced through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy who migrates. First the participant takes part in a Holi celebration that brings together several religious communities. Then they board a train from Lahore to Delhi and explore the carriage with a virtual gas lamp. It is part of Project Dastaan, which uses virtual reality to reconnect Partition refugees with their childhood places.

World premiere at Sundance 2022 and XR History Award at VRHAM! 2022.

Interactive virtual reality docudrama; 1947 Partition, forced migration, memory; Festivals / Oculus Quest

A short pixel-art narrative game. The player is Geeta, 15, whose family forces her to jump into a well during the riots of the 1947 Partition. Now in an afterlife, she talks with other victims. The script is based on interviews from Ritu Menon's research. The focus is violence against women committed in the name of honor.

It shows the use of Bitsy in an Indian university classroom to work with oral archives and the gendered memory of Partition.

Bitsy (browser); 1947 Partition, violence against women; Free

Three teenage girls run away from a matchmaker, the "aunty," who tries to marry them off to whatever suitor she finds. To avoid her, the players pursue a career, study or even gain weight. The cards bring the aunty closer or push her away. Among the suitors on the board is a green-eyed "Golden Boy" with a foreign passport. The game ends when they are all married.

The designer, trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, drew on her own experience of facing arranged marriage in Pakistan.

Board game; Arranged marriage, women's autonomy; Kickstarter

A military phone game set during a counterterrorism operation in Swat. The player chooses a rank and completes missions: transporting troops by helicopter with an Apache escort and ground combat on a large map. The start screen includes an ISPR briefing. In 2019 Journey to Peace came out, with missions in mountains, tunnels and deserts.

A game produced by the armed forces' public relations apparatus; a press headline presented it as a replacement for PUBG.

Military mobile game; Counter-case: military propaganda, counterterrorism; Free (iOS and Android)

The player makes decisions for a woman whose husband is arrested at night. She must navigate the Pakistani penal system. Decisions include using the children's education money to pay lawyers or moving to protect them. No option is easy. The game deals with the death penalty, police torture, poverty and the lack of legal defense for defendants without means.

A human rights NGO campaign that expanded into interactive street theater, an augmented reality filter on Instagram and radio.

Interactive fiction (browser); Death penalty, police torture, access to justice; Free

A Pakistani father makes life difficult for his university-student daughter. The player is the son, in the middle of adolescence. He must choose between going along with the father's authoritarian control over the women of the household or breaking that pattern and supporting their independence. The game addresses domestic violence and everyday misogyny from within the family.

In 2016 the same academy co-organized Impact Jam PK, the Pakistani edition of a global social impact game jam.

Visual novel (PC); Patriarchy, domestic violence; Pay what you want

The first online war game published by the PLA. There is a public version with competitive and cooperative modes, and a military version for internal use. The cooperative missions pit players against the Imperial Japanese Army. The Japan Self-Defense Forces appear as basic training enemies.

It was used to recruit and educate troops; its missions seek to inspire patriotism.

Online shooter; Counter-case: state military propaganda; Free with national ID registration

The protagonist travels between Seoul in 1992 and a camp in Indonesia in 1945. She gathers evidence of the Japanese army's crimes against the "comfort women." The title refers to the Wednesday demonstration that survivors have held since 1992. The idea came from something survivor Kim Bok-dong used to say.

A crowdfunding record for a Korean game (3,551 backers in 2020); half of the profits were pledged to the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance.

Narrative adventure for PC; Memory of the 'comfort women'

Herman, a boy from Jeju Island, tries to survive a massacre in the late 1940s. The player talks with relatives and with survivors hiding in a cave. Objects are combined and puzzles based on the island's folklore are solved. The player writes a diary to leave a record for the generations that follow.

It brings the context of the 1948 Jeju massacre (the 4.3 incident) into a game; Trigo Maldonado (2025) cites it in his study of memory in Korean games.

2D graphic adventure; 1948 Jeju massacre (4.3 incident); Paid (PC)

It depicts Gwangju in May 1980. It shows the citizens of the uprising as criminals and violent gangs. It presents the action of the martial law troops as justified and includes a photo of the dictator Chun Doo-hwan.

It was blocked in South Korea and remains available in other countries; Professor Seo Kyung-duk publicly denounced it.

Video game (Steam); Counter-case: revisionism about the 1980 Gwangju uprising; Blocked in Korea; available elsewhere

Four LGBT Asian American girls join their high school baseball club in Fremont, California, in 2008. The story alternates with scenes from their childhood. You advance by reading and choosing dialogue. The author based the characters' different Asian backgrounds on her own upbringing in California. There is a sequel (2022).

Nominated for narrative at IGF 2018; a reference for queer Asian American self-representation, with an unofficial Spanish translation.

Visual novel; Queer Asian American self-representation; Pay what you want (itch.io)

A branching-choice game for high school students. It complements classes on Marcos's martial law in the 1970s. The title plays on "bodega," the storage room where atrocities took place. The author frames it as an interactive alternative to texts and documentaries in the face of fake news.

Its author points out that almost no game had addressed martial law because of the risks involved.

Narrative choice video game; Marcos's martial law; fake news and revisionism

The teacher runs the game and each student plays a role: activist, journalist, military police officer, Marcos crony, detainee or civilian. Each role has missions and skills, such as interviewing or arresting. Experience is earned through presentations, quizzes and a weekly journal. It covers the period from the 1972 declaration of martial law to the People Power revolution.

Free material from a digital memory museum, designed to counter historical revisionism in schools.

Educational classroom role-playing game; Marcos's martial law and People Power; against revisionism; Free download (Martial Law Museum)

A ten-minute simulation in which an unarmed protester dodges the police without being able to attack. It came out in the middle of the conflict. Its authors accused Steam of censorship in an open letter.

Video game; 2019 protests; Pay what you want

With the streets closed by the pandemic, protesters moved the protest to their virtual islands. They sang "Glory to Hong Kong" at in-game concerts and set up islands for hitting portraits of Carrie Lam. Joshua Wong showed his island and offered tours to journalists. It is not a game "about" Hong Kong: it is an appropriation.

The game disappeared from online stores in China on April 10, 2020, shortly after Wong's tweet.

Activist use of a commercial game; Pro-democracy protest in virtual spaces during the pandemic; Commercial game (Switch)

A high school couple lives in a rural Indonesian town modeled on the late 1990s. The story deals with teenage anxiety and depression, crossed by a supernatural thread. The player walks around the town, talks with its inhabitants and follows the couple's relationship.

It addresses mental health from a local Indonesian context, with an Indonesian studio and a publisher from the same country.

Pixel-art adventure; Teenage anxiety and depression in 1990s Indonesia; Paid (PC and consoles)

Dewi, who is pregnant, works at a toll booth in Janapa, a fictional country in collapse. She checks vehicles and documents and decides who gets through. Every decision weighs following the rules against helping. Around her, protests, prices and mistrust grow. It is inspired by the 1998 Asian crisis in Indonesia.

Its director lived through the 1998 riots; part of the proceeds was donated to Indonesian Women in Games.

Narrative simulation; 1998 crisis, motherhood, moral decisions amid social collapse; Paid (PC)

High school students recreated Hiroshima before, during and after the atomic bomb. Users walk along the Motoyasu River and visit the post office and the courtyard of Shima Hospital. The students interviewed survivors (hibakusha) and asked them for comments on the images.

A school project presented on the 73rd anniversary of the bombing; an example of passing testimony between generations through a playful medium.

VR experience; Memory of the atomic bomb with hibakusha testimony; School project

In two-day workshops, children rebuild the cities in Minecraft as they were before August 1945. They use maps, photos and films. In Hiroshima they rebuilt the site of today's Peace Park, with a temple and a kindergarten that once stood there. The project seeks to show that the bomb fell on an inhabited neighborhood.

It grew out of the account of a hibakusha who was told by a child that it "was lucky" the bomb fell on a park.

Educational use of Minecraft; Peace education; rebuilding neighborhoods as they were before 1945; In-person workshops

The player accompanies Khatijah, a Muslim teenager from Myanmar who flees her country and tries to survive in Malaysia and reunite with her family. The app simulates her daily life as a refugee. It is based on the persecution of the Rohingya people. It was developed by a Malaysian advertising agency with the UN agency.

An institutional case studied in Spanish; different from Against All Odds (already on the site). Note: produced by an international agency, not by a community.

Mobile app / serious game; Rohingya refugees in Malaysia; Free app (mobile)

A multiplayer shooter in which players can attack junta generals, such as Min Aung Hlaing, and soldiers. It was created after the 2021 coup to fund the resistance. The profits went to the National Unity Government for aid to victims, refugees and displaced people.

It donated more than 160,000 Singapore dollars; in September 2022 the junta banned these games and warned that having them on one's phone could lead to arrest.

Battle royale mobile shooter; Resistance to the 2021 coup; funding for the NUG; Free (Android, iOS)

You play as a soldier of the People's Defence Force on missions that mimic real events. The characters are based on people in the resistance: doctors, Muslim citizens and LGBTQ+ people. Ad revenue goes to local groups for food, weapons and aid to displaced children.

According to its author it raised some 508,000 dollars; Apple removed it and later reinstated it. It raises the problem of games as a means of financing armed struggle.

Ad-supported mobile game; Armed resistance; funding for the PDF; Free (Android, iOS)

Rights Bingo mixes puzzles, memory and bingo for primary school students. In Rights Cards, secondary school teams solve cases of human rights abuses by matching solution cards. The cases come from everyday Thai life. They were inspired by an earlier game, Sim Democracy.

Some 3,000 students played them in 2018 in schools, universities and organizations. Note: promoted by a German foundation together with the Thai state.

Educational board and card games; Human rights and democracy at school; Distributed to schools and organizations

A card game about Siam's colonization of Patani. It challenges the state narrative about the Malay-Muslim insurgency in the south. Military officers, academics and right-wing politicians accused it of spreading disinformation and inciting against the state. The source does not describe its rules.

On November 28, 2022, security forces confiscated it without a warrant at a café in Yala.

Card game; Siamese colonization of Patani; Deep South conflict; Physical

Two students are trapped in a mountain high school during the White Terror, under the martial law of the 1960s. The player explores the school, solves puzzles and pieces together the story of a club that circulated banned books. A student's informing leads to arrests and an execution. The game uses elements of Taiwanese folk religion.

The team discarded a fictional dystopia and chose the real history of the military regime; it was adapted into a film (2019) and a Netflix series with Taiwan's public television (2020).

2D horror video game; Memory of the White Terror and martial law; banned books; Paid (PC, PS4, Switch)

The player explores a Taipei apartment in the 1980s. The story follows a screenwriter and his family, and his turn toward the teachings of a religious leader. The game works with family life and folk religion. A talisman on a wall alluded to the meme comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.

A censorship case. It was pulled from Steam in China and then worldwide (2019); China revoked its distributor's license, and GOG canceled its release in 2020. It returned in 2021 through the studio's own store.

First-person horror video game; Family and folk religion in 1980s Taipei; Chinese censorship; Paid, Red Candle's own store (DRM-free)

You play as a Việt Minh soldier from the defense of Hanoi to the siege of Điện Biên Phủ. The title refers to May 7, 1954, the date of the victory. The weapons reproduce those used by the Việt Minh. Vietnamese cultural authorities provided historical information.

It inverts the gaze of Western shooters about Vietnam. Note: anti-colonial memory with state support and a nationalist tone; poorly received by critics.

First-person shooter; Anti-colonial war against France (Điện Biên Phủ); Paid (PC)

Each player is a colonial governor who earns points by exporting goods and constructing buildings. Each round, players choose roles such as Settler, Builder or Trader. Critics point out that it erases the exploitation of enslaved Africans on the plantations and the Indigenous population. It was the top-rated game on BoardGameGeek for more than five years.

A counter-case made from the outside; a case study on colonialism in board game design and the reference against which Promesa was designed.

Board game, 3–5 players

A tower defense game set in the pā, the Māori fortification. It brings traditional Māori art into a digital format and uses a glossary of war terms in te reo. Its creators describe it in different passages as bilingual or "100% te reo Māori." Its stated purpose is to promote the Māori language.

The subject of an academic analysis using Kaupapa Māori methodology; an early example of a commercial game in te reo.

Tower defense (mobile); Māori language; history; Mobile app

A photography game set in a city occupied by UN soldiers while the government fails to act on the climate crisis. The critique lies in graffiti and posters. Faulkner wrote it after his mother lost her house in the Australian bushfires. IGF Grand Prize 2021.

Video game; Climate, state neglect; Commercial

Players move around the board by answering questions about the Pacific Islands and phrases in several languages. These include Fijian, Tongan, Samoan, Cook Islands Māori, Niuean and te reo Māori. The authors want first-generation Pasifika young people to learn phrases in their heritage language and connect with their roots.

Youth self-representation from the Pacific diaspora; promoted by New Zealand's Ministry for Pacific Peoples.

Board game; Pacific languages; diaspora identity; Direct sale (RRP NZ$15)

A virtual reality experience presented as the first game entirely in te reo Māori. It takes place in a dystopian future in which humanity has destroyed the Earth. It explores the broken relationship between the Atua Māori and humanity. The player interacts physically with the environment. The director cites environmental degradation as the origin of the project.

Audience award at the Māoriland Film Festival 2024; selected for imagineNATIVE 2025.

VR game; Māori language; environmental crisis; Atua Māori; Meta Quest Store

An endless runner in the Ngaanyatjarra language. The runner must find the right plant and take it to a traditional healer to save a girl. It has seven levels with obstacles such as giant animals. The warnings and praise are recorded in children's voices, for example "palayi" (watch out). Students from Warakurna helped fine-tune it.

Presented as the first computer game in Ngaanyatjarra; co-designed with a community linguist.

Endless runner (Android); Ngaanyatjarra language; traditional knowledge

A virtual reality serious game narrated by an Elder. The player prepares for a "tombstone opening," a mourning ceremony with song, dance and a feast. They gather objects and food from Mabuiag Island to Boigu, where they trade with people from Papua New Guinea. At night, Islander constellations appear, such as Baidam, the shark, and Tagai, the warrior.

Its author theorized it through the "Torres Strait Cultural Tree" as an Indigenous design model (see Readings); it was used in UNSW courses and Indigenous events.

VR serious game; Torres Strait Islander culture; astronomy; Not available to the public

A fantasy world inspired by Australia has been drained by the Murk, a greedy parasite. The player fights it by planting native species, restoring the bush and rescuing animals. The team describes the Murk as a metaphor for colonization; its design is inspired by invasive blackberry brambles. Communities and Elders were consulted during development.

It is presented as the first Aboriginal-led mobile game; it premiered at Melbourne International Games Week and in 2026 it headlines the Blak Pixels exhibition.

Mobile video game; Indigenous; anti-colonial; ecological restoration; Free (mobile)

"Widi" means game in Nyiyaparli, a language with about eight fluent speakers according to the source. Players complete missions in real places and cultural sites of the Pilbara. Collecting cultural objects earns "Paathupaathu Points," respect points. The voices heard are those of Elders who have since passed away, older speakers, mothers, fathers and children from the community, which designed and voiced the game.

A community language revitalization game; it was launched alongside the PULiiMA 2025 conference on Indigenous languages and technology.

Mobile game app; Indigenous language revitalization; Free (iOS/Android)

Buru is a white ibis, a retired thief, who returns to a coastal town for one last job. The player talks with animal inhabitants and plays dice minigames in the style of tabletop role-playing. The story was born in a D&D session in 2021. It touches on culture, colonization and exploitation. All key creative roles are held by Indigenous people.

Funded by Screen Australia and Screen NSW; its director won the AGDA Rising Star award.

Narrative video game (PC); Indigenous; colonization; exploitation; Steam (coming soon)

A Halloween walk-through of four rooms with archival audio and video and original art. It reviews colonization from the sixteenth century and the US takeover of 1898. It includes Cornelius Rhoads's experiments, the Ponce Massacre and forced sterilizations. The ceiling is a blue FEMA tarp from a house after Hurricane María.

It uses a popular scare-game format for anti-colonial political education; it closes with a moment of empowerment.

Interactive haunted house; Colonialism; Hurricane María; state violence; In-person event (2019)

An arcade strategy game set after Hurricane María. The player guides coquí volunteers who distribute aid in a town while dodging rain and new storms. The scoring rewards active, risky play. It includes information about hurricanes and community aid, with a bibliography on Puerto Rico after María.

It frames mutual aid as a response to climate disaster. The page does not state the author's background.

Arcade strategy; Hurricane María; mutual aid; climate; Itch.io

A game about the Haitian Revolution set in the colony of Saint-Domingue. The protagonist is a telepath and singer, not a soldier. The player navigates the colony's racial classifications through dialogue trees. A wrong remark can cost the protagonist their life. The game has no combat.

A rare view of the revolution from the Haitian diaspora, avoiding the war register of commercial titles.

Narrative with dialogue trees; Haitian Revolution; colonial race; Unreleased

A point-and-click adventure in a future where Kānaka Maoli lead space travel. With their navigator grandfather's space canoe, the player searches for their missing sister across three planets. The kukui nut is used to clear water, make torches or wake the demigod Kamapua'a. It is spoken in 'ōlelo Hawai'i with subtitles.

Indigenous futurism made by Hawaiian students from mo'olelo; selected for A MAZE. Berlin 2018. (The Skins workshops are already on the site; this is a specific work that came out of them.)

Point-and-click adventure; Indigenous futurism; mo'olelo; Hawaiian language; Free download (PC/Mac)

A competitive card game inspired by the wars between Kalani'ōpu'u of Hawai'i and Kahekili of Maui. The demos test knowledge of the wars between chiefs. The studio was born in a place-based literacy program in Nānākuli. Its other project, Kaona, turns a Hawaiian model of well-being into a role-playing game with a community health center.

A Kanaka studio from the Wai'anae coast that places Hawaiian culture at the center and addresses the community's social problems.

Card game (2 players); Hawaiian history; wars between chiefs; Demos at fairs

An open-world adventure in an archipelago inspired by New Caledonia. Tchia searches for her kidnapped father and can "jump" into the souls of animals and objects. With her ukulele she changes the time of day or the weather. The characters speak French and Drehu, a Kanak language of Lifou. The team recorded Kanak music and voices on the island.

It won Games for Impact (The Game Awards 2023) and the BAFTA Game Beyond Entertainment 2024. The sources do not document a formal cultural consultation.

Open-world adventure; Kanak culture; Drehu language; Commercial (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox)

A parapsychologist arrives in Saint-Pierre on May 7, 1902, the eve of the eruption of Mount Pelée, to investigate apparitions. The adventure revolves around slavery and the social ills of the plantation. It uses a Caribbean legend about jars of gold. Chamoiseau, a writer of créolité, collaborated and contributed a tale.

The first game by Tramis, considered the first Black woman video game designer; she said it sold poorly in France.

Graphic adventure; Slavery; plantation; colonial memory; Abandonware/historical

On an eighteenth-century French plantation in Martinique, the player chooses one of four enslaved people. Over one night you have to evade dogs and guards and convince others to join. The revolt grows into open war. Confrontations with masters are brief fights by hand or with a machete. There are enslaved women among the protagonists.

An early game about slave rebellion made by a Caribbean author; Sepinwall and Jankowski read it as a postcolonial game. Tramis received the Legion of Honour in 2018.

Adventure/strategy; Slave rebellion; slavery; Abandonware/historical

Puerto Rico's debt is represented by black gems on a blue silicone raft in the middle of the board. Players have to push the raft off the island without any gem falling. To win, they invest in public goods such as health, education and infrastructure. The PROMESA law appears as a mechanism that maintains colonial status.

It responds explicitly to the game Puerto Rico (see counter-case); it grew out of workshops at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, San Juan. Mixed co-authorship from outside and from the island.

Cooperative dexterity board game; Debt; colonialism; PROMESA law; Limited print run