There is plenty of depressing news regarding the environmental issues we all face. Any news source will tell you in detail how far we still have to go, and the horrors we face if we don’t “fix” our problems now, now, now.
But there is also hopeful news out there. And there are companies working, just like Luk was in Phagey, to help train ourselves to do better. Make better choices. Work together to create solutions. Daybreak is a result of just such an endeavor.
Daybreak is a board game for up to 4 players, ages 10 and up, in which players work cooperatively to stop climate change. While this game concept sounds like something Lukas Behn might have designed in my debut novel, Entheóphage, it was actually created by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace through a Kickstarter campaign, and is apparently now doing quite well.
The game itself is a lot of fun, though there was a bit of a learning curve. My friend Susan, who is a big fan of Phagey, recently invited me to play with her family because she said it reminded her of my book’s theme. All of the players helped me learn the ropes and determine strategy—a cooperative effort which fits the game’s concepts—but here’s the general gist (offered by someone who has played this game exactly once).
A Daybreak game can run anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes. Each player starts with a country or region: Europe (that was me), China, the US, and the rest of the world. Depending on which role you play, you start out with a certain number of tokens for things like dirty energy, clean energy, transportation carbon emitters, industrial carbon emitters, waste carbon, and so on, as well as a household. Each round presents climate crises that the players have to work together to resolve. The goal is to “plant” enough trees so that between the trees and the oceans, all the carbon that is “emitted” in the player’s roles is sequestered. If it isn’t, the game isn’t over, and the temperature goes up, which fuels further crises. The players win (as a group) if they manage to a) each meet their own energy needs and b) sequester all the carbon being emitted by their activities.
If it sounds multi-layered, you’re right; it is. As I said, there’s a bit of complexity to the play, but it was relatively simple to start picking it up as we went. I loved the fact that the game itself had a hopeful feel. Play was not only fun, but educational, and focused on reducing dirty energy, reducing emissions, building green energy, and building energy efficient, sustainable projects that would benefit all the players. And that cooperative spirit of the game only added to my enjoyment. If each of us had played only for ourselves, we *all* would have lost. And isn’t that really the truth in this whole climate change issue? We need to work *together* toward a win, or we *all* lose.
Published by CMYK, The game comes in a box, but there are no plastics or textiles in the entire game. It’s all wood and paper components made from 100% FSC Certified forests, harvested sustainably and with future regrowth in mind. CMYK has many other games, too, all of which further their goal to create “immersive, social games that don’t look like anything else on your table.”
I’d love to play this again sometime, and I highly recommend it.
Find out more here:
Daybreak: https://www.daybreakgame.org
CMYK: https://www.cmyk.games
