Merge Mansion’s grandma wants your green thumb

Merge Mansion is taking part in the Green Game Jam, an annual challenge that sees game studios and developers of live games building ‘green activations’ to shed light on the importance of environmental topics. So, even from the comfort of your gaming chair or couch, you can do your bit to help save the planet.

Nature conservation and environmental preservation are at the forefront of everyone’s minds, with the looming threat of climate change and a whole bunch of other issues that plague our planet. But the Green Game Jam hopes to open up the discussion and get you involved with all things, well, green. Huge names in the gaming space such as PUBG are also taking part in the Green Game Jam, a challenge organized by the Playing for the Planet Alliance and facilitated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), all aimed at helping the gaming industry reduce its environmental impact.

As part of this initiative, much-loved puzzler Merge Mansion has created the Green Acres quest, a special event running from September 2-14 that focuses on the importance of restoring the beauty of nature and supporting local biodiversity in small, everyday actions that all gamers can take on board. In this green-thumbed limited-time event, you need to merge and deliver items to create a blooming community garden. Get those seeds sown and don your very best straw hat, because you need to transform part of the Mansion grounds into a beautiful, shared green space that encourages all kinds of flora and fauna to return to the neighborhood.

This event unfolds on a second board and features a collectible community garden that you can actually keep after the event, as a reminder of all your hard work, and as inspiration to go green in real life, too. It might seem simple, but oftentimes it’s the most effective way to remind yourself that we’re all just floating on a space rock that we need to look after. Even us gamers can make a positive impact on our environment.

Merge Mansion has over 55 million downloads, and so by joining the Green Game Jam, developer Metacore hopes to remind us all of our green thumbs. The studio is also a founding member of Pelimetsä, a project that has merged – pun intended – the Finnish game developer community to protect biodiversity in Finland. Admirable and environmental.

If those green thumbs are already itching, we have our picks for the best farming games you can play right now, as well as the best cozy games for when you just want to kick back and relax after a day of activism. Don’t forget to take the recycling out, though.