Published on April 25th, 2020 📆 | 3674 Views ⚑
0The 12 best boardgames for Earth Day
The other day, I thought my six-year-old was about to pop one of those questions every parent dreads answering. With a reverentially serious tone, she asked, âDaddy, I have a question I been thinking about a long time...ââcue a pause long enough to stop my heartââDo snails leave their slime on rocks forever?â
Whew. So she wasnât awake during last weekâs parent-on-parent hour.
Before becoming a father, I was aware that tiny humans donât come prepackaged with much knowledge, but I never thought Iâd have to discourage gleeful littering or pry little hands free from the dogâs ears. We may still be animals, but respect for nature doesnât always come naturally to kids (or adults).
Curiosity, though, is easy to foster, especially once the kids figure out that board game night means staying up late and filling their bodies with unhealthy snacks. So, with Earth Day happening this last week, here are some of my preferred board games for inspiring curiosity about the planet and our role on it.
The roots: appreciating nature
Letâs start with the basics: the Earth is pretty, animals and bugs are cool, and we should probably take care of things here if only so those statements remain true.
For little fingers that love to tinker, there arenât many better games than Planet. The game itself is perfect in its simplicity, letting you add magnets to a dodecahedron as you attempt to create suitable habitats for a number of different species. There are only three priorities to remember: creating lots of habitats, big habitats, or big habitats that arenât near other habitats. Even my six-year-old quickly mastered the art of ensuring that every single tundra-dweller flocks to her planet. As a bonus, you get to admire your three-dimensional globe when youâre finished.
More experienced players will likely appreciate Wingspan and Parks. Thereâs a good chance youâre already familiar with the formerâs clever combo-building and gorgeous illustrations; if not, check out our review from last year. Parks is less known but every bit as beautiful. Its artwork is licensed from the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series, and it lets players tour some of the most dazzling destinations across the United States, rationing resources and campfires while snapping pictures and gazing at wildlife. Despite being competitive, itâs a serene, almost meditative experience.
If youâre more interested in actually putting yourself out in nature, Hive is one of the finest modern abstract gamesâand itâs entirely waterproof, perfect for playing in the grass or tucking into a fanny pack. Gameplay revolves around trapping the opposing queen by using bugs such as the far-ranging grasshopper, beetles that crawl over the top of other insects, or the power-sucking mosquito. I once played this against a mustachioed river guide who immediately announced, âBoard games are cool these days, man!â
The trunk: sturdily connected
âWe may be apart, but weâre also more connected than ever.â This yearâs Earth Day slogan both acknowledges the current pandemic while also reminding us of our shared responsibility to the world we inhabit. The following games emphasize that sense of interconnectionâand its fragility.
Like Planet but with more room to explore, Ecos: First Continent is about forming a landmass and populating it with roving species. Here the appeal revolves around a delicate balance between your own goals and those of your opponents. Everyone is working with the same grasslands, savannahs, and seas, and each player can easily riff on anotherâs tiles and tokensâor even consume them for points. Nothing is exactly âyours,â belonging instead to the rest of the developing ecosystem, which produces a process of creation thatâs both competitive and collaborative.
On the more carnivorous end of the spectrum lies Evolution and its offshoots, including Evolution: Climate and the more recent Oceans, which we reviewed earlier this year. There are some significant differences between each entry, but all are alike in two major regards: first, they contain some of the sharpest card play youâll ever encounter, and second, you win by chowing down on as much food as possibleâincluding the creatures evolved by your friends. This spurs an evolutionary arms race that sees everybody running (or swimming) as fast as they can to outpace predators, parasites, and even cataclysmic climate changes or asteroid impacts.
Arbor Day also happened this week, and the game Photosynthesis throws shade (sorry) at the notion that plants don't make for hot board gaming action. You hope to grow your forest from lowly seeds to mighty trees, but you are competing for space and sunlight, while trying to keep out of the shade cast by rivals. The trick is that each turn rotates the direction sunlight shines in from, rewarding planning and ensuring that no one angle is entirely superior. Like the Evolution series, everything here is connectedâyou even earn points by having your largest trees decay, making room for a new generation of saplings. Hopefully your own, of course.
The branches: reaching beyond
If appreciation for nature doesnât seem sufficient, plenty of titles delve deeper into the workings of the Earthâs climate, geological processes, and history. Unsurprisingly, some of these offerings are significantly "heavier" than the games discussed above. But the best of them justify their increased rules and play time with involved gameplay, interesting details, and even some insightful commentary.
Perhaps the most ambitious project is the Bios trilogy. Consisting of Bios: Genesis, Bios: Megafauna, and Bios: Origins, this series traces the evolution of life from primordial ooze to the present day. Each entry tackles a different subject and can be played either individually or strung together. At times, their concepts, rules, and terminology can feel like a crash course in that entry-level biology course you slept through in college. Genesis, for example, casts its players as amino acids, lipids, pigments, and nucleic acids as they invest in various environments and chemical processes to achieve unicellular reproduction and eventually multicellular life. Megafauna is the most accessible of the trio, as the same creatures (or plants, mollusks, and fungi) that you evolved in Genesis crawl onto land and compete for limited space, even as the Earthâs atmosphere is altered by your respiratory processes. By its conclusion, someone will likely have developed the rudiments of emotion, segueing directly into Origins, a civilization game unlike any other. Neanderthals struggle against Homo sapiens, language groups and religions are formed and fought over, and cultures are defined by the philosophical concepts and technologies they embrace.
What makes the Bios trilogy so thrilling is the way it intermixes setting and gameplay. While each entry fits neatly with the others, none of them play the same way. Genesis is about choosing what to invest in, reflecting the long odds of nucleotides bonding together to form RNA. Megafauna is a fast-paced race to develop new traits and claim territory, always struggling to be on top of the food chainâor on the bottom, if youâre a herbivore. Origins, meanwhile, is about charting your own course as your variety of humankind develops consciousness and decides which values to pursueâand eventually comes into conflict with other worldviews. The result is breathtaking in its scope and packed with enough ideas to dive down a hundred different search engine rabbit holes.
Sol: Last Days of a Star
Finally, no list about nature, conservation, and our shared responsibility to our planet would be complete without Sol: Last Days of a Star, a parable about the eventual destruction of our sun due to unsustainable energy mining. This might seem like a strange inclusion for Earth Day, since it steps beyond our blue marbleâs atmosphere. (Farther, even, since your entire goal is to build an ark to carry you beyond the Solar System.) But as we fill our night sky with so many satellites that observatories struggle to study the stars, worry about the switch to green energy, and consider the long-term effects of Kessler Syndromeâorbiting space garbage, basicallyâitâs useful to remember that whether weâre tackling climate change or rocketing into outer space, we carry our baggage with us.
In Sol, the sunâs days are numbered and exodus is the only solution; Solâs parable urges action. Perhaps if we act today, we can prevent the dire necessities of tomorrow.
In other words, the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day is the perfect time to spread appreciation, understanding, and education about this world we inhabit. And there are plenty of board games ready to pitch in.
Gloss