Last year, Cascadia, where players compete to create “the most harmonious ecosystem” in the Pacific north-west, won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award as well as American Tabletop Awards’ best strategy competition. The game was reviewed by the science journal Nature, in addition to more traditional gaming publications, and sold over 750,000 sets in its first year.

In 2020, Wingspan, in which players develop biodiverse bird habitats, was named the best strategy game by the American Tabletop Awards. (They also said they would not use plastics in the game.) The makers of Daybreak, which developed a following on the crowdfunding site BackerKit, have pledged to donate a portion of the profits to climate justice organizations. Leacock, who designed the hit game Pandemic, said that he and fellow designer Matteo Menapace initially based Daybreak on a textbook model of the atmospheric emissions cycle conversations with relief groups prompted them to take a more human-centered approach. There is an increased public desire to engage with climate change in a tangible way In the new genre of climate-themed games, creators like Leacock make collaboration the key to success. In the world of board games, most titles involve total victories over adversaries in zero-sum competitions. “ realized the game should represent the human suffering and loss caused by the climate crisis and that the challenge was not merely a war on carbon,” co-creator Matt Leacock said. Four players – the United States, China, Europe and the “Majority World”, encompassing the global south – cooperate to reach zero emissions before hitting 2 degrees of warming or putting too many communities in crisis. These are not conversations at another high-profile global summit, but rather scenarios envisioned by the board game Daybreak, which hits shelves this spring.

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