Overburden is a mining term used to refer to the waste that lies above economically valuable material. In Overburden, the player explores a deserted mining town, with the goal of discovering the reason for its abandoning. The player reads writings of past inhabitants and discovers common themes of mismanagement and disregard for warnings that also apply to today's climate change discussion and end in hardship for working people. The narrative approach used is an attempt to approach climate communication in an innovative way, rejecting previous ideas of information dissemination and is designed to appeal to players that a more explicitly environmental game may struggle to. Overburden is a solo development project by Ian Rai, featuring original 3D assets using the Unreal Engine 5 engine.
