I played Daybreak, a tabletop game designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace, published by CMYK. This is a game about stopping climate change. Each player represents a different region, and works together to prevent climate tipping points. The game mainly uses cooperative and challenge-based play.
One important mechanic is that each region has different characteristics. I played in Europe, which allowed me to plant more trees. I also have fewer crisis communities, thus I can discard more cards to resolve world crises. This created a dynamic of players discussing who needs help and how we could combine our strengths. Similarly, the shared boards, faced-up cards, and shared crisis & projects reinforce the dynamic of open strategic planning. The resulting aesthetic is Fellowship: we share the same goal and depend on each other. In terms of outcome, it practices coordination, and communicates the attitude that climate change is a shared responsibility. However, I noticed that I spent most of my time managing my own region because the complexity was already overwhelming, and thus limit the degree of collaboration.
The game’s objects (trees, waves), resource systems (types of energy) and rewards all reinforce the theme of an interconnected climate system. When temperature increases, players need to roll dice that create cascading effects. For example, I rolled the dice that lead to deforestation and lead to more carbon emissions and lead to further temperature increase. These dynamics of constantly responding to consequences create the aesthetic of Challenge. However, this challenge may interfere with the intended informational outcome. The cards introduce different climate actions and have QR codes with additional information, but the game becomes so intense that I doubt players will stop to scan or read them. I often looked at the numbers, costs, and effects rather than the actual names of the projects. It might convey a general sense in attitude, such as trees are good because they reduce carbon emissions and industry and dirty energy are bad because they interfere with the success.
Finally, the five stages and many types of resources (e.g. social resilience, population) create a dynamic of constant calculation and planning. The unpredictability of crisis and developmental projects make the gameplay more random and variable. This creates repeated problem-solving – I had to keep track of power, social resources, resilience, crises, projects, and future rounds. I felt engaged and sometimes frustrated, but maybe the frustration is intentional. Such a Challenge may communicate that climate change is a hard problem and there are so many realistic constraints. For example, you need enough power to sustain the population. You can’t predict the crises and the cascading effects. The game therefore gave players a general understanding of systemic climate action and its constraints.
In summary, Daybreak’s complexity creates a strong sense of challenge and communicates the interconnectedness of climate change, but it can also make players focus so heavily on calculations that they have less time to collaborate, learn the informational content or reflect on climate change itself.
