Growth: a sentient ecology game

by Jule von Berg, Maya Nagaraj, Rebecca Stephens and Sarah Theimer

In this interactive fiction game, players practice sentient ecology by examining the relationships between human and non-human entities, and treating those non-humans as complex, feeling beings. Players move through a cyclical story as they transition between the perspectives of various entities. They can examine the environment through these different lenses and perform actions. The story progresses in response to the player’s actions, and the simple act of examining the environment triggers events and transitions. Thus, players become active agents in the story by embodying and seeking to understand other sentient beings.


This game was created as part of ‘Queer, sentient and visionary ecologies’, an interdisciplinary seminar by the Universidad de Concepción and the Ludwig Maximilians Universität München. It explores sentient ecology, the interactions between human and non-human aspects of environments. By practicing sentient ecology, we attempt to treat all living things (and even non-living actors) as capable of having complex feelings and relationships, even though we might not understand those experiences ourselves.

In this game, you can explore your environment from the perspective of different entities, and by examining the environment you can change to new points of view.

We hope that while playing this game you think about your connections with non-human entities. Enjoy growth!