Game of no rise: Are dreams of living on the coast soon to be washed away?

Andrea Graves

New Zealand Listener·

8 Jan, 2026 06:04 PM4 mins to read

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The Future Coasts Aotearoa game, will better inform decision-making. Image / NIWA

Having gutted our way through a December with February temperatures, climate change might be on many minds. Yet still there’s the seasonal longing to live near the sea, to peruse real estate listings at the holiday beach town. Many of us already live on the coast. How can we discover
what the future holds?

Consider diving inside the science-based crystal ball that is the online game at futurecoastsaotearoa.niwa.co.nz. There, you become a virtual beach-dweller who also lives near a river, and you make choices over eight decades. The sea rises, the river floods and storm surges temporarily engulf beaches. You have a monopoly-style bank balance to spend. It’s a multi-player or single-player “serious game”.

At first it feels good to live next to a river and the sea, and your house is reassuringly valuable. You’re in the river’s flood zone and the sea is headed your way – but, meh.

I tried to fend it off by paying for a stop bank, stilts for the house and nature-based sea protection (in other words, planting the coastline). Each turn in the game is another decade. The climate events that befall you are generated randomly, but they’re based on real estimates. “They’re a reasonably robust representation of what we expect,” says Scott Stephens, coasts and estuaries chief scientist at Niwa, now part of Earth Sciences NZ.

My heart ached with every cyclone and flood, bringing to mind footage of torrential rivers sweeping away cars and buildings. The bank washed away. I was living in a caravan because I couldn’t afford my house repairs. Its value became nil. Buying the cheapest city townhouse became financially unattainable. After six decades, my town was mostly engulfed by the sea, sea-walled or planted or not.

I regretted trying to hang on. Those eight virtual decades of carnage meant that in the subsequent games I played as a marae kaumātua and as a dairy farmer, I chose differently. Believe the maps! Sell and move to higher ground or to the city immediately! The marae was moved far enough inland to survive. The farm wasn’t and progressively lost value, becoming worthless after 60 years.

There are no winners. Those who sell early lose the pleasure of beachfront living for a mystery length of time before a cyclone causes the sea or river to surge into their property. There are trade-offs everywhere.

That’s the point, says Stephens. “It puts people into the future to actually experience it, and therefore they’re better armed for their decision-making here and now. It unlocks the conversation about adaptation to climate change.”

Niwa, along with social impact gaming company Geo AR, built the game for another reason, too, he says. “We wanted to create models that would enable us to say what the best actions were to adapt to rising sea levels. There are the options people can take, but we didn’t know when or how they would actually take them. So when people play the game, we anonymously record the way they act and react, then we can incorporate that behaviour into our models.” The information may translate into policy guidance.

So, what’s likely to happen to your favourite patch of coast in real life? To view sea-level projections, go to the map at searise.takiwa.co (or wait for the 2026 update). The map accounts for whether the land is rising or falling. Even where it’s rising, it’s not enough to outpace the ocean.

Don’t be comforted by the height at which the sea will lap lazily. Notice also the swelling and surging of sea and rivers during storms and cyclones, because that’s what will first damage properties. To check out their effect, google “extreme coastal flood maps Aotearoa” to find Niwa’s map and projections.

As for more hot days, future-gaze at map.climatedata.environment.govt.nz. Remember that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next-best time is now.

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