The board game Terra Futura has been a huge success among players and visitors to one of the world’s biggest game fairs, Spiel’21, in Essen, Germany. The game was created as part of a collaborative international project ‘Game On’ with the Czech game company Albi. Terra Futura takes players into the future, where they build cities and strive to achieve the greatest possible balance between production and sustainability. The ‘Game On’ project aims to positively motivate and encourage young people to engage in activities aimed at tackling climate change. The project uses gamification to understand the global context and impacts of climate change on people’s lives and planetary ecosystems.

“Terra Futura is a minimalistic, fast and fun board game with simple rules and swift pace where no one gets bored. It is a competitive strategy game for 2 to 5 players with a suggested age range of 10 and up,“ presents the game Viktorie Tenzerová from non-profit organization Na mysli, which is the Czech partner of the Game On project. “In October, we had the opportunity to present and play Terra Futura with more than 150 students from several schools during events we co-organised within the framework of our global development education programmes. We have had great feedback from both the teachers and the students themselves. By joining the Game On project, it is now possible to get the Terra Futura board game into schools, hobby clubs or educational organisations,” adds Viktorie Tenzerová. 

“With ‘Game On’ project we aim to reach out to a younger generation in 8 European countries, fostering collaboration and joint activities. The main narrative of the project is that we consider climate change as a huge strategy game we all, as individuals, civil society, corporations and governments, have to play in order to win and not let climate change end the game,“ says Thor Morante Brigneti, ‘Game On’ Project Coordinator from CEEweb for Biodiversity.

Last week, Terra Futura was also presented among more than other 500 board games at the Spiel 2021 international game fair in Essen, Germany, one of the biggest board game events of its kind in the world, where it met with great success among players and visitors. Essen Spiel is a popular and well-attended trade fair dedicated to board games.

“Terra Futura definitely made a splash at Essen Spiel, world’s biggest board game convention. From the very first day people were intrigued by the theme, which is still very unusual in this hobby, art and easy yet ‘thinky’ gameplay. The pollution mechanic felt novel to a lot of players and there was a word-of-mouth going around the fair since more and more people were coming to try the game,” says one of two authors of the game Petr Vojtěch, Game Designer.

“The board game had very good reviews in the United States and Germany before Essen, which caused a really big interest among visitors in Essen. Interest in the Terra Futura continued throughout the fair, which was certainly supported by the fact that the famous board game influencer Rahdo included it in his Top 10 list of games to discover at Spiel before the fair. Players particularly appreciated the clean game design and simple rules. Nearly 94,000 visitors from all over the world attended Spiel this year,” adds David Rozsíval from Albi.

Thanks to the fact that Terra Futura got in the sights of one of the biggest board game influencers Rahdo (100k+ subscribers), who included it in the TOP10 most anticipated games at the fair, a lot of people flocked to the Albi booth on Thursday morning just after the opening and wanted to play the game. The last day of Spiel, Terra Futura was ranked twelfth in the list of the prestigious German gaming magazine Fairplay, which annually announces and awards the top 10 games of Spiel out of several hundred selected games. 

Terra Futura board game includes 73 cards, 160 wooden tokens, scoring sheet and set of rules. The game takes approximately 30 minutes and there are many paths to victory – but careful: not all of them are environmentally responsible. Each player will have a chance to experiment with effective planning and optimalization and try to effectively build a city, manage economy, secure resources, manage production, industry, and agriculture, grow food, manage transport, export, and import of goods, while also taking care of waste management and recycling. All of it while maintaining a healthy ratio between production and sustainability and minimizing the impacts on environment.

About the project: 

The project ‘Game on! Don’t let climate change end the game’ is an initiative of a consortium of 10 partners from 8 Central and Eastern European countries to activate the global youth and react to the existential threat climate change represents for the future of humankind. The project has been made possible thanks to the co-financing of the Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR) mechanism.

The Consortium strongly believes in the energized, strong will of younger generations to push forth for the urgent systemic change required to overcome the challenges posed by climate change. Thus, the project strives to activate this energy all across the region and the globe through a ‘gamification’ approach to initially tackle three core areas: Biodiversity Conservation, Adaptation and Mitigation, and Climate Justice.

The project has been deliberately given the name ‘Game on’, as over the next years a number of playful activities are going to bring a sustainable lifestyle closer to the people. Geocaching, creating an own board game, making awareness-raising videos and developing an own smartphone application are all among the plans, providing concrete help in answering unresolved questions to keep the game alive with conscious decisions. All this is done to bring the main topics of the project - biodiversity, culture and climate justice - as close to the people as possible.