The environment is facing significant harm due to human activities, yet many individuals feel powerless to make a difference. While awareness of environmental issues is widespread, psychological barriers often prevent people from adopting sustainable practices. Our game seeks to address these barriers by fostering a sense of empowerment and modeling practical, sustainable behaviors in an engaging, educational format.

By addressing the dominant social paradigm, notably a mindset of separation from and control over nature, our game encourages players to adopt more sustainable attitudes and actions. Combining psychological principles, such as meeting human needs for autonomy, competence, and connection, with interactive gameplay, the project aims to shift mindsets, inspire confidence, and drive real-world behavior change for a more sustainable future.

Elements from existing board games like Catan, Clue, and Life inspired our game design. The box includes the board, cards, turn tokens, characters, dice, scoresheets, and instructions. 

Objective: Be the first player to get two points in each of the nine categories. 

Target Audience: Our game is designed for ages 12 and up. However, it is intended and most effective for individuals in late adolescence. 

On their turn, players roll the die and move around the board to different locations in an urban setting. After entering each room, they choose from the associated deck of cards and choose between either the sustainable or alternative options. The sustainable choice yields a turn token, and the alternative choice yields a point in one of nine categories. The objective of the game is to be the first player to get two points in each of the categories. The board is modeled after a real-life town and has locations like the grocery store, gym, town hall, and park. The points also model real life, and the categories include health and wellness, social life, status and wealth, and family. There is also a Global Health Scale at the top of the board, and if it reaches a maximum of 10, the game ends immediately in disaster. Players have the opportunity to reduce the scale by drawing from the community deck and interacting with each other. 

Our game strives to educate players about the importance of seemingly small actions and the power of each individual to make a difference in stopping climate change. The game mechanics provide a safe space for players to not only learn about sustainable behaviors but practice them as well. Overall, we hope to not only teach players about the necessity of balance between sustainability and everyday life but to convince them to implement sustainable behaviors as well. 

Our game is a psychological intervention, which means it has been strategically designed to promote behavior change and alter mindsets through repeated gameplay. Although it may sound like magic, it is all backed up by psychology.

Our tactic uses wise interventions to reshape how players think and feel about sustainability by targeting the self-defeating cycle of powerlessness. Repeated games can alter mindsets leading to a self-enhancing cycle of empowerment, which is what we are trying to convey with our game. 

Our game also uses self-determination theory that emphasizes the psychological human need for autonomy (players can make choices), competence (easy-to-follow rules), and relatedness (competition/collaboration) creating a sense of empowerment and control. 

We are also utilizing pathways of influence to help players shape their beliefs, mindsets, and behaviors. These include motivation through challenges and rewards, active learning through game problem-solving, social interaction through collaboration and competition, and easy-to-understand contextual learning through realistic contexts players find in everyday life. Through the pathways of influence, players internalize the concept of sustainability to adopt eco-friendly practices on their own. 

All in all, it’s not just about winning or losing but how players engage and what they learn in the process.