What does the ground, dirt, and soil have to do with games? Quite a lot! Let’s dig into it.
Soil has a long history in games, with a variety of perspectives emerging across the decades. It’s a trending topic today, appearing across both tiny independent games and big-budget franchises, with the role and depiction of soil shifting with the changing times.
Popular PC games platform Steam features a yearly Earth Appreciation Festival showcases full of new and upcoming games dealing in some way with soil. The 2025 edition focuses on dystopian climate crises used as a setting and games where nature itself is a key component.
Before continuing with soils in popular commercial games, let’s have a quick look at the world of serious games.
Serious Games
Serious games are games made with a goal other than commercialization, focusing instead on educational, social or cultural goals. SOILSCAPE project partner l’Association Française pour l’Étude du Sol (AFES) has compiled a list of many resources on soil, including some physical games like La Fresque du sol, which they co-created, and board games like Terra, sols d’avenir. Some can be printed and played at home, such as The Hidden Life of Soils from the Agence de la transition écologique (ADEME) and partners.
Official promotional image for La Fresque du Sol
Web games also exist from various organizations, including an adaptation of La Fresque du sol titled Sol’i’Terre. Thanks to such games, players can deepen their understanding of soil and its place in our world. Hackathons will be organized in the context of the SOILSCAPE project to foster the creation of more games promoting soil literacy.
Commercial Games
Outside of educational contexts, soils and games go way back. 1982’s Dig Dug, for example, presents its levels in the form of cross-sections reminiscent of soil trails that players dig through and navigate in two dimensions.
Author’s screenshot, Dig Dug
Fast forward a few decades and we have the seminal Minecraft, recently adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster. In Minecraft, vast worlds are generated each time you start a new game. Simple ecosystems are modelled in the form of biomes, including forests, swamps, tundras, and more. Under the surface we find different types of soil and stone, which may house gems and ore, as well as cave systems and mines cutting through the underground.
While blocks may exhibit certain behaviours, like cascading water, crumbling gravel, and grass growing on dirt, most blocks just float in the open air if isolated and do not form meaningful (eco)systems. You can dig into the soil, mine tunnels through the earth, and in fact destroy nearly all underground blocks without having an impact on the surface. Fun, no doubt, but a far cry from the complexities of real-world soilscapes.
Official screenshot, Minecraft
The basic building blocks of Minecraft can serve as a basis for pushing its representation of soilscapes through community-made mods, short for modifications, which are unofficial changes made to games that are shared in online communities. A notable example is the fascinating MonocultureMod from Lucas Ursprung that strives to bring a deeper modelling of soil health into the game.
Trailer screenshot, MonocultureMod
While layers of soil are depicted in many commercial games, from Boulder Dash to Spelunky, they have no function resembling actual soil. They serve as obstacles to be overcome, a playing field to be navigated. This ludic nature of soils persists across gaming history, alongside another major trend: soil as a resource to be exploited.
Exploitation
The Farming Simulator series is quite popular, selling millions of copies. They are all about gamifying industrial agriculture with a focus on productivity and profit. The soil exists only to be worked by the player in the context of their virtual farm. How these industrial processes impact the soil is largely ignored in such farming games.
Official screenshot, Farming Simulator 25
Yet alongside this exploitative use of soils in the game, so-called precision farming features are soon returning to the 2025 edition of the game. The origins of this content were partly funded by the EU to “highlight sustainable technology in agriculture to create awareness in the general population.” This expansion allows for diverse soil types, soil sampling and modelling of pH and nitrogen levels. It’s clear that despite its beginnings as content funded for educational purposes, some players respond well to increased realism and conditions, with some adding features such as crop rotation via mods, for example.
Official screenshot, Farming Simulator precision farming web page
Agriculture is also a key concept in Sid Meier’s Civilization, a series of games where players lead a civilization from antiquity to the modern era and beyond. One of the first technologies that players research is agriculture. In the case of Civilization V, the fifth entry, agriculture allows players to build farms on suitable lands. Then comes irrigation and plantations, then lumber mills, and the next thing you know, your lands are dotted with factories, oil platforms and uranium mines. Expansion and exploitation are key to success.
Official screenshot, Civilization VI
While the exploitative role of soil remains in the game’s latest iterations, climate change has now been included in the series thanks to Civilization VI’s Gathering Storm expansion. This update adds consequences for actions such as deforestation and carbon emissions via an increase in natural disasters and rising sea levels as the planet warms. In terms of soil, flooding causes damage to infrastructure and displaces citizens, but may increase land fertility; droughts reduce the yield of agricultural activities; and melting polar caps will progressively submerge coastal land.
Author’s screenshot, Civilization VI
Although the latest entry, Civilization VII, does not include climate change in the base game, it has kept natural disasters and may well add further mechanics in future expansions.
Alternative Takes
The colonial worldview presented in many strategy games like Civilization is contrasted by creative Indigenous-led games and novel independent productions that put forward different perspectives.
Arrival: Village Kasike, developed in consultation with a Taíno cultural expert, shows players Taíno ways of growing crops in a mount, caring about the synergies and rotation between plants in relation to soil health.
Official screenshot, Arrival: Village Kasike
Elizabeth LaPensée’s Thunderbird Strike has players take the role of the eponymous thunderbird, protecting the land by unleashing lightning to destroy industrial infrastructure. LaPensée also co-created the fascinating When Rivers Were Trails, with gameplay that centres on “sovereignty, nationhood, and being reciprocal with land,” as per the official wiki. Both games can be played for free.
Official screenshot, Thunderbird Strike
Many popular independent games also offer different perspectives on soil. In The Wandering Village, the “land” is found on the back of a giant creature. Players must establish a symbiosis with the beast in order to survive in the toxic game world together.
Official screenshot, The Wandering Village
For a totally different perspective, let’s bring the camera in a lot closer. Play Empire of the Ants or the upcoming Insect Worlds for an up-close view of the soil, plant and insect life on a tinier scale than we normally see as humans, shifting the way we perceive the soilscape that surrounds us.
Official screenshot, Empire of the Ants
And finally, Terra Nil flips the script on the popular city-building genre by having players work to reclaim industrial wasteland, healing the soil then rewilding the landscape with plants and animals. Players impact the ecosystem in various ways, from managing water and wetlands to nurturing the soil via controlled burns.
Official screenshot, Terra Nil
Many of these trends are coming together in an upcoming game developed by Hamburg-based Positive Impact Games, titled The Regreening, mixing folklore, soil science and a story about restoring the planet as the last human on Earth, rendered with a beautiful art style.
Official art, The Regreening
What’s Next?
As commercial games push the boundaries of soil representations and projects like SOILSCAPE promote soil literacy in Europe and across the world, there’s really no limit to the creativity in playing with virtual soils in digital and physical games. Players interested in soil representation in games can keep their eyes on Steam’s yearly Earth Appreciation Festival showcases for new and upcoming independent games on the topic.
The SOILSCAPE project will promote soil literacy through games by organizing hackathons and showcasing them at the upcoming yearly Soil Festivals. Please look forward to more information in the future.