PLAYED
DAYBREAK
It’s time to save the planet – for real
Designer: Matt Leacock, Matteo Menapace | Publisher: CMYK
Why do you play board games? To escape, or to engage? Most of us would answer the former, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Board games have value precisely because they transport us away from the daily grind and the stresses that come with it. But since their earliest days, many board games have also encouraged us to engage with ideas and relevant themes, by exploring or at least considering pertinent concepts or issues through play.
The danger with this kind of game, however, is that its preachiness – or teachiness – can drench the fun.
A first look at Daybreak might set some escapists’ alarm bells warning. After all, it fundamentally and directly concerns one of the greatest causes of modern anxiety: climate change. Its bright, appealing design and upbeat tone brim with positivity and ‘we can do this’ optimism, but there’s no avoiding the fact that every play will, to varying degrees, be a narrative of all-too-relatable crisis and disaster. It also doesn’t hold back from educating – though much of this is done via unobtrusive QR codes on cards, which ping you over to texty explainers of such climate-change-battling policies as universal public transport or microgrids. (These web pages also give a bit more detail on how each card works, in lieu of an FAQ or appendix, though that is somewhat annoyingly buried at the bottom.) So it is, primarily, a game of engagement, rooted in the right here and right now. But that does not stop it from being both beautifully crafted and actually huge fun.