#solarpunk games

Here I go on with my ideas for Indie Solarpunk games, that are not some sort of building sim or farming sim - and of course I cannot do this without mentioning CRPGs.

Mind you, despite what you might think given that over the course of the last year I have barely played anything but a certain CRPG (BG3), CRPGs are actually not really a genre of game I am super into, even though some of my favorite games are CRPGs. But as a genre in general I usually like faster paced games a lot more. It is just that when I hyperfocus on something that usually is a result of me getting obsessed with a character from it - and that is more likely to happen with a CRPG than with a metroidvania.

But how to do a Solarpunk CRPG?

The Issue:

Look, there really are not any CRPGs right now that are in any way Solarpunk. And I would argue this goes again back to the issue that people struggle with telling stories within a Solarpunk setting, as they are too set in the idea that a) Solarpunk needs to be an utopian setting (or a setting that pretends to be utopian) and b) that utopian settings will not allow for any conflict whatsoever. Additionally there is of course also the issue that most CRPGs do involve violence in form of fighting, which is what a lot of people struggle with - even though some amazing indie games like Disco Elysium have shown very well, that you can do a CRPG without a combat system.

So, let's go over some ideas for Solarpunk CRPGs.

Idea #1: Off-Brand Princess Mononoke

If you follow me for any time, you might know that to me there is no movie or piece of media that is more Solarpunk than Princess Mononoke. And thankfully we can easily build a sort of CRPG around it, either with a similar historical setting or just a fullon fantasy setting. Because remember: Solarpunk does not need to be Science Fiction!

No matter whether you go with a historical setting or just a full-on fantasy setting, the idea is fairly easy: The player character has a magical problem and they need the help of some sort of spirits. As they travel to the place of the spirit, they find out that the spirits are in a war with some group of humans, that are encroaching of the home of the spirits, because they try to access some sort of ressources, driving the spirits nearly to extinction. The player would have the choice in the end which side to join - or whether they will try to broker peace between spirits and humans.

Bonus: You'd have several choices how to play the game - but it is not a clear cut "good" and "evil", especially when the humans might have good reasons to need the ressource.

Idea #2: A SciFi Conspiracy

This idea is very much for a somewhat shorter game. Think a bit more like "Shadowrun Returns". Something that has more like 15 to 20 minutes of a runtime.

We go with the idea I brought up in one of the other ideas before: We have a Solarpunk world, that runs on mainly anarchist principles, and there are some arguments going about over some of the security mechanisms. (Anarchy can after all not properly work, if some people have weapons and others don't have - but you cannot undo the existence of weapons.) Our main character is part of some security force, that mostly are just trained to deescalate situations, but are in some cases allowed to use force.

And when a group of pro-capitalists or maybe even actual fascists start a conspiracy to take over the government, and they already have some co-conspirators in all positions. And the main characters need to navigate this with a mixture of diplomacy and violence, with the player getting a fairly good influence on how this plays out.

Idea #3: A Natural Disaster

Let me take one approach, that is inspired by one of the most Solarpunk movies, that is not by Ghibli: Misaki no Mayogai. That movie takes place after the Tohoku earthquake and is very much about mutual aid in the community.

And here is the thing: No, CRPGs do not need to have combat. So this is an idea for a CRPG without combat. We have a natural disaster of some sort. Honestly it does not matter. An earthquake, a flood, a vulcano... Can be anything. It just did destroy a lot of stuff in a big area. And the game is very much about rebuilding after this disaster, about people helping each other through mutual aid, and then building something better from it. It could feature a society going full Solarpunk if you want to (like a positive post-apocalypse) or just something getting a bit better. Build back better and such.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist - Playthrough 1 True Run Romance: Tang/Cal/Rex (final romance: Cal) Ending: Botanist Last night I finished my first playthrough of I Was a Teenage Exo-Colonist and hoooooly shit... I've never come across anything that captures the essence + aesthetics of me so well?! Even to the point where some of the character arcs/dialogue were so eerily similar I wondered who had been listening in on my life and relationships.

I almost cried when I was first presented with the character design with its gender and pronoun slide, with its super comprehensive list of terms I could adjust to suit me/my Sol, and then it continued to just hit all of the super sweet "yes!" spots for me: cool a.f narrative about human-xeno relations and time loops? check! beautiful pastel art aesthetic? check! super hot romanceable companions and very well written characters? check!! My Sol (Solane) this time round was a nerdy but also super tough non-binary babe who worked in geoponics their whole life whilst also seriously dabbling in engineering and expeditions. Their best friends were Tang and Dys, and they romanced Tang, Rex and Cal. Literally my *only* grumble was that *of course* I would romance the two boys who were not both polyam compatible and I had already hooked up with Cal by that point so couldn't continue my adventures with Ultimate Good Boy, Rex. I love the reality of having monogamous/polyamorous characters but damn... will a game just let me unleash my entire polyam desire please?

Okay, yes, I will admit: This list of games for the most part is mostly about putting out some ideas for games that are less slow and more fast paced. Because so far we had mostly very, very slow games in this. Still, I do want to make one post about VNs, because I still think that the VN genre is a super fun one, that is way to underused and undervalued. Also Romance games or Dating Sims, that sadly mostly get hated on for no reason.

The Issue:

Especially on itch.io there are a couple of Visual Novels for Solarpunk and nearly a third of the games on Steam are also tagged for it, but I feel that for a big part this once more suffers from the same issue as the Solarpunk novel writing: People struggle with coming up with a proper conflict, especially here for having the branching paths that often are a big part of VNs. And Dating Sims often are kinda a subgenre of Visual Novels (their origin is from a crossover of VNs with finance games, which is still so wild to me).

Like yesterday, just three little ideas what one could do within this mix of genres.

Idea #1: A Scientific Horror Story

My favorite subgenre of VN is the horror VN. Even though it kinda gets more attention only recently. And as some who follow me for a while know that I love the idea of Solarpunk horror. As I have said before: Horror - especially Supernatural Horror - is perfect for Solarpunk. Because ghosts, demons and monsters do not care whether or not you have an utopian world. They will still haunt you!

So, here is the idea: A group of scientists start their work in some remote location. My general idea is either some scientists for natural stuff (biodiversity?) or something historical (maybe of dead cultures). But while they are there isolated in their small group, strange things keep happening at the station. And it turns out that the area their new station is set up in is in fact haunted.

I personally would probably link the haunting to some sort of dark history. Maybe colonialism, given that Solarpunk is also very anti-colonialist and such. Though I am going to leave it at that.

Idea #2: Murder in a Solarpunk Commune

I think one of the most common genres of VNs is actually the Mystery genre. A lot of VNs are somewhere in the mystery genre. Maybe in crossover with another genre, but a lot of Mystery is there. Which kinda makes sense. And as I said before: Even in a Solarpunk world murders will happen. They will be less, but they will happen.

So, here is my idea. We have a Solarpunk future where most people live either in city or in rural communes. There are also a whole bunch of people who will just travel as a sort of futuristic bards. This is the player character. And this futuristic bard comes to a rural commune to stay for a few days - when a murder happens. And somehow everyone errupts in accusations, because the murder victim has clearly been a bit of an asshole. So now the people ask the travelling main character to be the one to solve the murder. And hence the player needs to talk to people and try to find out what is happening in this place.

Idea #3: Polyamorous Dating Sim

Lastly, let me talk Dating Sim. Admittedly, I have only played so many Dating Sims, but let me talk about the thing that annoys me about them: All of them are mononormative. There is basically no Dating Sim that is polyamorous. Sure, there are a handful indie poly dating sims, but it is pretty rare. Which, yes, I am very aware that this is also for technical limitations. But hear me out.

Just make a sweet little dating game of a person getting into a nice solarpunk setting. Maybe into a rural commune, maybe into a science center, something like that. Does not really matter, but they are gonna date. But this is a world were polyamory is pretty normalized, so some of the people you are dating are actually already in a relationship - at times with each other. And depending on the kinds of constellations you could play around with the outcomes for this.

Again, just have not seen a lot in this direction and man, I would do a lot for it!

Let me talk about my absolute favorite genre of games. I love action platformers and especially I love Metroidvanias, that most of the time come along in the form of action platformers. (No, this is not the blog to discuss on whether or not a metroidvania needs to be a platformer or not.)

My own Solarpunk dream game would be a metroidvania, to be sure, though I sadly am just not capable of developing it on my own. (If you wanna help: just contact me - I would love to get a small team together for it.)

But let's go over this.

The Issue

The main issue with action platformers/metroidvanias in terms of Solarpunk is, that again, a lot of people struggle with thinking of conflicts for Solarpunk - especially conflicts that would create some sort of violence. Because action platformers almost necessarily need some sort of violence. After all it is usually about shooting or stabbing or at least jumping onto enemies of some sort.

So, how do we do that? Well, I have three ideas to offer. Mind you, my own little idea for the game I would want to make is not among those. :P

Idea #1: The Rogue AI

So, a simple idea that would work rather well in any sort of futuristic Solarpunk setting is simply a rogue AI. Imagine this: We have the Solarpunk utopia. But to archive this, we had at some point needed AI. Be it to fix the planet, or be it for certain work, or maybe AI had been used in bringing down the former capitalist system. Or heck, maybe the former capitalist system was run by an AI, that by now has been shut down.

Either way: The AI goes rogue, and it turns against humans. Maybe not worldwide (we are still on the entire action platformer thing, where usually the area is a smaller area like a big building or maybe a village/town), but maybe it starts up in a building complex or a city where the AI is kept. Something like that.

But it will start to control all sorts of robots, that then attack the humans. Maybe there are also some humansthat get possessed by the AI in some way.

And the main character is trying to get to the mainframe to shut down the AI once and for all. So the enemies fought are robots and maybe controlled humans. Simple.

Idea #2: Nature's Revenge

Another basic idea that can well work with Solarpunk ideas is one that works more on the basis of fantasy. Once more the reminder: Solarpunk can have fantasy themes. Nothing about the genre says that it has to be pure non-fantastic fantasy, and I will still argue that solarpunk does not even need to be scifi.

But to keep with the scifi optics we can still go for a futuristic world for this one. Again: We have set up the Solarpunk future, we try to fix nature, but we are not quite there yet. Because fixing nature after all the destruction is not that easy. And as nature starts to regenerate, something in it awakes. Some sort of nature spirits. And they are angry about everything humanity has done to nature. They do not care that humanity is trying to correct for this. Think something along the lines of Princess Mononoke or Nausicaä.

The protagonist is someone who is trying to protect the humans in the place where the spirits showed up. And they are forced to fight the spirit. This could also be an interesting basis for maybe being allowed to find way to then dispatch bosses non-lethally and find a solution to the conflict that does not involve destroying the spirits. Some creativity would be cool! Especially given platformers rarely offer alternatives to violence.

Idea #3: Capitalism vs Solarpunk

For the last idea, let's please remember that Solarpunk does not need to be set in a world where utopia was fully reached. In this idea we will either have a world where some parts of the world life under Solarpunk - or even the full world. But here is the thing: Just like some people want the monarchies back and wish back slavery and shit, even in this Solarpunk world there are some people who believe that they were better of under Capitalism. Because usually people idealize the past and believe they would have been among the top 5% in any other time - rather than among the exploited class. And those people try for a coup.

Maybe with guns, or - we are scifi after all - with some sort of robots or mechas. But either way, they try to grab control over some important city or piece of infrastructure. And the protagonist is of course forced to find a way to fight against them and prevent the takeover in some way.

Those are just some little ideas with how to deal with the setting and the genre. And maybe... Well, maybe I was able to inspire someone!

Begin again; begin anew?

I remember a life, a life full of flowers and long afternoons spent laying under domes filled with pastel coloured light. A life where I toiled away at the soil with Cal, blushing as we snuck glances at each other's changing bodies. Where I was actually *good* at science, good enough even to keep up with Tang. There are times when I look at Tammy, Professor Hal, and even my mum, and feel this horrible pain deep within me as though they are gone.

But that cannot be because they are all still here, right beside me. I suck at science so bad because I spend all of my time playing sportsball with Anemone, and training under Rhett. And even though I'm friends with Cal, I've never looked at him like *that*! That cannot be this life.

And yet, there's this feeling that I cannot shake.