Kseniia Harshina Kseniia Harshina Tom Tucek Tom Tucek University of Krems Press 2025 Colonialism has always functioned as a slow apocalypse, erasing cultures, lands, and communities. However, video games frequently present colonization and empire-building as strategic puzzles rather than destructive forces. This paper examines how "cutopian" games, which pair cute aesthetics with colonialist and authoritarian mechanics, trivialize power structures, making conquest, surveillance, and governance feel non-threatening. Through The Battle of Polytopia and Lil’ Guardsman, we analyze how visual design and gameplay mechanics depoliticize empire. Contrasting these games with decolonial alternatives, we highlight approaches that resist expansionist logic and highlight resistance and Indigenous storytelling instead. Drawing from animated media, we also examine how empire is often displaced into metaphor rather than dealt with as an ongoing material reality. Finally, we ask: Is it possible to decolonize cutopian games – to use their aesthetic softness to reveal, rather than obscure, the mechanics of oppression? PDFDocument eng 2025-11-14T10:40:38.388207Z 2025-11-14 Video Game Aesthetics Ideology Decolonization Decolonial Game Studies 612690 b application/pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/