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The world is in a place that feels like it is on the edge of a knife. Late-stage Capitalism, the ever looming presence of the climate crisis, the current resurgence of fascism; it feels like the apocalypse may come any day now. With the world this way it makes sense for it to be explored in recent games. Silksong (Team Cherry), Demonschool (Necrosoft Games), and Citizen Sleeper 2 (Jump Over the Age) are a trio of games all released in 2025 that do this through how important community is at different stages of the apocalypse.

Silksong

Silksong has you play Hornet, a bug forcefully brought to the decaying land of Pharloom by its ruler, Grand Mother Silk. However, before she reaches them, she breaks free and ends up at the very bottom of the land near a small village marking the start of the pilgrimage to the peak. Now free, Hornet vows to reach the peak and discover the reason for her capture. Moving through the land, it is obvious that there is an apocalypse happening at this moment. Silk infects the land, controlling corpses and capturing bugs. Decay is everywhere as the land crumbles beneath this infection and resultant disuse. Throughout her pilgrimage she learns of the Grand Mother and that confronting her would mean a fight. Going through with this fight, Hornet rushes the apocalypse to its conclusion, destroying Pharloom. But what of its inhabitants?

Hornet starts indifferent to the other bugs in this land, not caring for them except for when she can benefit from any interaction. These interactions are mainly through wishes, quests the bugs have that supply rewards to assist on her travel, or through directly buying supplies. But even through Hornet’s indifference, she still does these tasks and the bugs of Pharloom grow fond of her. Doing good for the community for ones own gain is still doing good. And this fondness reflects back onto Hornet.

Eventually, some of these wishes start to become less beneficial for Hornet. For example, instead of collecting items for a monetary reward, there is a request for building supplies as a donation. There is no benefit for doing this in terms of a reward, but you can do it anyway, and in turn bring Hornet closer to the community. She learns to trust the bugs through the land, and eventually develop relationships with them. Hornet now has a connection to this land.

So what of Hornet’s confrontation with Grand Mother Silk? Well, by fulfilling all these wishes and getting close to the land, another path opens in the form of another wish. With her newfound connection to this land, Hornet herself forms a wish to find a way to trap Grand Mother Silk so the land is free of the apocalypse. This opens an entire third act to the game devoted to Hornet protecting Pharloom and its inhabitants.

Hornet’s selfishness is nothing in the face of community. As Hornet completes her pilgrimage she cannot help but connect. The community she helps develop and eventually becomes a part of gives her the reason she needs to care, the reason she needs to risk herself, the reason she needs to fight the apocalypse.

Demonschool

Demonschool is set on Hemsk Island, a college town that you need to be ferried to from the mainland. As demon hunter Faye, you come to this island as it is the convergence point of the coming demon apocalypse. With weeks to spare Faye must battle demons, seal the entry points they are coming in from, and push back against different groups and institutions encouraging the apocalypse. But one person can’t do all of this, there are too many obstacles to handle alone.

This is realised from the first moment of the game when Faye starts by trying to find other people of demon hunter lineage on the island. Over the course of the first week as you are introduced to the game, you slowly build up friendships with people of this lineage who help you fight. Combat has you control each party member via action points (AP) that are shared between them all. The first move you make with a party member costs one AP, the next two, and so on. But crucially, this cost increases for that party member only. This means that using a single party member to fight is inefficient and weakens your play. If instead you share the points around, you can tackle more powerful foes.

But physical strength can only take you so far. Eventually, as the demons start coming through in larger numbers, a magical wall appears around the island and surrounding ocean preventing boats from coming or going, including supply ships. With no more supplies coming from the mainland the island will soon run out of food. To overcome this, Faye needs more than just her friends for help. Going into the woods, there is an old farm that has been left to decay. With the help of the witches in the region, as well as those able from the town, the farm can be rebuilt and produce a steady supply of food for everyone on the island.

Faye alone could not face down the demon invasion without her friends, and without help from the surrounding community of Hemsk Island, Faye and friends would not have had the strength to provide for everyone. With a community Faye is able to find the strength to fight back, the strength to support each other, the strength to provide for one another.

Citizen Sleeper 2

Citizen Sleeper 2 takes place in The Starward Belt, an asteroid belt littered with the remnants of a collapsed corporation. This collapse devastated the region leaving the various colonies and space stations derelict until taken over by the various people still living there. Entire cities are built on these remains and people make a living extracting resources from other collapsed structures, a constant reminder of the past apocalypse. Further sunward of The Starward Belt another apocalypse approaches in a massive corporation war wreaking destruction on the inner system.

You play as Sleeper, an android that is captain of a small vessel, alongside the pilot Serafin. The two of you are on the run from a mob and to survive, you have to do contracts to earn money. These contracts are done by rolling five dice at the start of the day and using them to fulfill the requirements. The outcome can result in Sleeper gaining stress, a status that damages your dice and can even break them.

This makes it very hard to complete contracts as Sleeper will keep building stress and may lose all their dice. However, as you go through the game and meet people that you can recruit to your crew, things become easier. Two of them can be taken with you on these contracts with each crewmate rolling two dice of their own each day. On top of this, when using their dice, they will take the stress effect instead of Sleeper. By developing a crew, you are able to share the load of stress when fulfilling contracts and more easily withstand the harshness of The Starward Belt.

But even with this sharing of the load, people can get injured. Sleeper still builds up stress and sometimes breaks their dice, and early on, Serafin gets injured pretty badly. Withstanding the harshness of The Starward Belt requires more than just additional hands for the work. But the crew is more than just a workforce, it’s a community you build up over the game. When Sleeper breaks their dice, one of your crewmates Bliss fixes them for you. And when Serafin gets injured, the rest of the crew is able to do some of the harder work giving him a reprieve whilst he heals up.

In the face of dangerous contracts and injury, Sleeper is able to keep going with the help of the crew they build up. A small community of people that gives each other the ability to withstand the fight by sharing the load and providing reprieve in the darkness.

Summary