Mental Wellness Games Meet Eco-Anxiety Head On

Environmental change and mental wellness are more connected than they might first appear. As young people grow up more aware of climate change, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss, eco-anxiety has become a real and growing part of how they experience the world.

In 2022, Ecogames partnered with The Contentment Foundation to design four pilot games, built around self-awareness, connection and emotional resilience rather than environmental content directly.

The Contentment Foundation is a US-registered non-profit focused on wellbeing education in schools and communities, working through its Four Pillars of Wellbeing framework to support physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing for children and teachers.

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The four games developed together each take a different route into that work:

Curryosity is a self-awareness and connection game for adults, where players answer progressively more personal questions to build fast, meaningful connections with others.

Ripples of Kindness turns small acts of kindness into a fast-paced card game, encouraging players, alone or as a family team, to think through practical ways to make a positive difference to the people around them.

Emotionwise! asks players to express feelings through writing, acting, singing and drawing, building emotional intelligence through creativity rather than conversation alone.

Mindful Matches is a matching card game for all ages, built around focused attention, a simple way to practise mindfulness and concentration in a format young children can play too.

None of the four games address climate change or environmental topics directly. Instead, working closely with The Contentment Foundation on the emotional and psychological side of play gave Ecogames a much clearer picture of how self-awareness, connection and mindfulness actually get built through games, and how directly that overlaps with what young people need when they're grappling with a changing world.

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That overlap has stayed with the team since. It's part of why environmental literacy and emotional resilience now sit side by side across Ecogames' wider work, rather than being treated as separate subjects. Helping children understand a changing world, and helping them cope with what that means for their own wellbeing, work best together, and this collaboration was a big part of what pushed that thinking forward.

If you're working with schools or communities navigating environmental change and want tools that support both understanding and wellbeing, get in touch to talk through what Ecogames could offer.