In the final level of the Alluvials: the game, Malibu is on fire, again, and this time the neon pink-tinged synthetic vapor clouds of private water company Aquarius offer no relief. But firsts and lasts are kind of the same thing, right? The end bends back on itself to become a new beginning. A forest fire creates a clearing. 

This level splices wildfire ecology with Los Angeles’ efforts to suburbanize the Santa Monica Mountains through a program of disaster capitalism. It infuses this history with excerpts from an 18th-century treatise written by Émilie du Châtelet, a French natural philosopher and mathematician, that speculates on the intelligence and material and spiritual qualities of fire.

The final level of The Alluvials is something I’ve been thinking about a lot in terms of ecological grief and Bo Ruberg’s idea of permalife (a challenge to ‘permadeath’ games). It’s impossible to die in permalife worlds, impossible to lose them. But to continue playing as the planet continues burning is maybe the hardest challenge. Here the game is the landscape, revealing itself to you as a world falls apart. You play as wildfire.