Why an indie survival game gives me hope despite climate disaster

I was living in New Orleans in 2016 when The Molasses Flood released its debut title, The Flame in the Flood, an indie survival roguelike. Like the protagonist Scout, I was a young woman trying to make it through the hot southern summer along the polluted Mississippi River. At least I got to live in a house; Scout was making her way downriver on a raft after the climate apocalypse. 

This concern for the environmental future can be seen in so many of our society’s fictional stories over the last 20 years — WALL-E, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Day After Tomorrow, Fallout, SEASON: A Letter to the Future, The Parable of the Sower, Station Eleven, The Last Of Us, and even the brand new Denshattack! There is a palpable generational fear for what comes after. No piece of media has given me more hope for how to continue than The Flame in the Flood.