Future imperfect

If modern videogames are anything to go by, humanity may not have much to look forward to. Today’s game-makers clearly take a cold view of our prospects in the years and decades to come, although many of these visions aren’t necessarily looking forward so much as looking around, refracting contemporary concerns through the prism of dystopian science fiction.

Take photography game Umurangi Generation, a cult hit upon its original release last year on PC, but which feels comfortable in its new home on Switch – particularly in handheld mode, where you can tilt the console to adjust the orientation of the pictures you take. Yet these aren’t exactly holiday snaps, and ‘comfortable’ probably isn’t the right word for what is a caustic piece of social commentary, created as an angry response to crisis mismanagement by the Australian government. Then there’s the grimy cyberpunk setting of post-noir adventure Backbone, which provides a striking pixel-art backdrop for a story dealing with intensely relevant themes of political corruption and systemic racism.

Yet if we are the architects of our own downfall, there are reminders that the solutions to the problems we’ve caused lie within us. Your work in Umurangi Generation is a vital documentation of societal ills. And in Bandai Namco’s actionRPG Scarlet Nexus, which can be read as a metaphorical warning about our reliance on the Internet (the downsides of its pervasive technology are made glaringly apparent), its characters become stronger in battle by forming bonds with one another, even across ideological divides. When one character steps in to revive another, harnesses a friend’s power to bolster their own, or leaps in front of a vulnerable ally to block an incoming attack, a glimmer of hope pierces the gloom. Perhaps we’ll be OK after all?