Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is the first game developed in collaboration with the Iñupiat, an Alaska Native people. Nearly 40 Alaska Native elders, storytellers and community members contributed to the development of the game. Play as a young Iñupiat girl and an arctic fox as they set out to find the source of the eternal blizzard which threatens the survival of everything they have ever known.

Notes: Never Alone offers dynamic game play because at times you choose to play as either Nuna, an Iñupiaq girl, or as the Arctic Fox. It even becomes necessary to switch between the two characters to complete the puzzles and navigate through the game. You can’t complete the game without bringing the other character with you, as each rely on the other; human and nature to move about the world while seeking to save their home village from a blizzard (Ząbecki, 2019). Damli Lohne (2020) also mentions that the game was also envisioned by the publisher and the community as being one that could be accessed by the community and played in an intergenerational manner, so that video stories that were being relayed by Elders in the game will get passed on down the community through youth culture.

There is no better way to pass along Indigenous Knowledges and Indigenous Ways of Being to Indigenous youth and to share these with a community of settlers than through the often overlooked format of learning known as video games.

When Rivers Were Trails is a 2D point-and-click adventure game in which Oregon Trail meets Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. An Anishinaabeg in the 1890’s is displaced from their traditional territory in Minnesota and heads west to California due to the impact of allotment acts on Indigenous communities, facing Indian Agents, meeting people from different nations, and hunting, fishing, and canoeing along the way as they balance their wellbeing.

Notes: When Rivers Were Trails, which was released in 2019 and demonstrate why it’s such an example of a pinnacle turning point for Indigenous video games. When Rivers Were Trails is a game where an Anishinaabe individual is forcibly removed from their homeland in Minnesota in the 1890’s and travels west to California, surviving on traditional methods of gathering and hunting food sources and utilizing transport while avoiding Indian Agents (LaPensée, 2021). As Miner (2020) relays the things that are notably different between other video games that feature Indigenous Peoples or Indigenous Lands, are that When Rivers Were Trails has almost all Indigenous characters, cultural practices, and communities that were created by over thirty Indigenous contributors. Another difference is that the relationship between the player and the mechanics of the game have shifted, “The game makes room for generosity and a relational perspective on community (p. 312). It disrupts the narrative of The Oregon Trail, while also having a style of art by LaPensée and Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva) that makes it look and feel different and which is bringing about a renewed public interest in Indigenous video games. The game shares teachings of Indigenous Knowledges and Ways of Being that are by written by Indigenous Game Creators to control the narrative of video game play through a lens focused on placemaking.

Terra Nova is a game set on Earth in the far distant future. This 2-player cooperative platformer explores what first contact between Indigenous and Settler peoples might look like thousands of years from now. The game follows the stories of Terra, an Elder Earthborn landkeeper, and Nova, a youthful Starborn inventor as they explore their respective environments and interact with the people in their communities. Their two worlds collide after a mysterious spacecraft crash-lands in Earthborn territory and Terra is asked to investigate. Nova, in the meantime, is separated from the rest of his people and must navigate an alien world to find them. Players must explore unique environments and interact with interesting characters to uncover mysteries of the past.

Notes: Maize Longboat’s, Terra Nova is a two player video game set on future Earth that looks at an imagined world where Indigenous Peoples and Settler Peoples make contact with each other thousands of years into the future. Each are living in their own independent communities but eventually end up involved in an experience of “first contact” that allows players to dictate what will happen through a historical reframing of sorts. Longboat’s game was created as an Indigenous-led project with Mehrdad Dehdashti, Mi'kmaw artist Ray Caplin and sound designer Beatrix Moersch with references to Indigenous Knowledges and Ways of Being woven throughout (Muzyka, 2019).