Daybreak, summer solstice 2021
A new day brimming with opportunities, and a break from the past and present of climate inaction. In one word, daybreak.
Daybreak is a cooperative board game about stopping climate change. If you haven’t already, check out this quick overview of how the game works.
The name of the game
Today the sun is out the longest in the Northern Hemisphere, while the Southern Hemisphere is at its darkest. A day of extremes, it’s the perfect day to talk about the (new) name of our game, and why it changed from Climate Crisis to Daybreak.
It all started during the shortest days of 2020, when we began collaborating with Alex and Justin, who make and publish games like Wavelength and Monikers. Like Matt and I, Alex and Justin (whose day job is in environmental law and energy policy) had felt the urge to work creatively on the climate crisis.
We agreed a cooperative game has the unique potential to let people envision and play out a rapid transition from a fossil-fuelled dysfunctional system toward one that centres the wellbeing of people and the planet. We want the game to embody a new approach to climate action and international cooperation.
A new day brimming with opportunities, and a break from the past of climate inaction. In one word, daybreak.
More than a name
Over 2020 Climate Crisis had evolved into a sprawling deck of 180 cards, which players would try and activate using two different currencies: financial capital and political will. Despite the large number of cards, on top of 9 standard player actions, there wasn’t a great deal of interaction between them. Climate Crisis had a compelling loop and a promising threat engine, but we had to face the truth: each round felt like a collective budgeting exercise.
Daybreak marks a new direction in gameplay.
We abolished standard actions and redesigned the experience around the synergies that can emerge between cards.
While in Climate Crisis each card was played once and then archived, Daybreak lets players build a portfolio of focused, recurring actions. For example, a player might decide to specialise in wind energy, starting with a card that at first produces only one wind farm, but can be amplified by stacking more wind cards behind it, such as a wind tech R&D project. Each card can have an amplifying effect on other cards, or become a new focus. We started to understand climate politics not as a list of fixes, but as a web of interconnected initiatives that feed off each other.
We also abolished money!
So how do players “pay” for ambitious technological and political programmes? With cards. In order to trigger some actions, you discard another card from your hand. No more fidgeting with financial and political coins, no more large sums to hold in your head. While this is a more abstract representation of costs, it makes Daybreak much simpler and quicker than Climate Crisis, freeing up mental bandwidth for players to get strategic with card combinations.
Most cards are local projects. Players use them to decarbonise their own economy, while making sure they meet internal demands and build social, ecological and infrastructural resilience to help communities both survive and thrive. Among local projects we introduced a few powerful global projects, cards that can be funded by all players and once active will benefit everyone. In collaboration with experts (and game geeks) from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, we’ve been translating humanitarian instruments into global project cards.
Our mentors at the Climate Centre inspired a new, less deterministic model of how greenhouse gas emissions lock in global heating and perturb Earth systems. Instead of a linear conversion between “carbon” and “degrees”, we now have a deck of planetary effects which can accelerate global heating and trigger tipping points. For example, rising temperatures melt ice sheets, which reduces the surface for “natural mirrors” reflecting sun rays back into space, which traps more heat in the dark waters under the melting ice, which in turn raises temperatures even further. The higher the temperature on the game board, the more planetary effect cards will be drawn and resolved. This prevents players from being able to accurately predict threats based on their own emissions.
As peril and uncertainty are growing, so is the possibility for players to grow the impact of their actions. Our biggest design challenge is fine tuning these feedback loops.
More than a game
We continue looking for folks who can question our assumptions, challenge our biases and help us design a more impactful game. In particular, people based or rooted in the Global South. Over the last few months the online gaming platform Tabletopia has allowed us to test Daybreak with new friends in India, the Philippines, Malaysia and South Africa among others. Are you interested in playtesting Daybreak and sharing your perspective?
We also resumed in-person game nights! It’s such a joy to sit down at a COVID-safe distance with pals and climate experts like Laurie Laybourn-Langton (co-author of the excellent Planet on Fire) and take part in the messy collaborative effort to save humanity from climate chaos.
We want Daybreak to be more than a gripping game about one of the biggest challenges of our times. With this project, we also have the opportunity to set a new standard for sustainable manufacturing and distribution for the whole tabletop games industry. Alex and Justin have been working on a rigorous product life cycle analysis, which we can’t wait to share more about soon!
What next?
Read this quick overview of how the game works. And if this project inspires you, check out how you could get involved in making Daybreak the best it can be!
