K-12 Games

Regime

A transactional card game where players try to position themselves appropriately for each regime. Its purpose is to spark conversation around features of government (both political and economic frameworks) and ways people can affect or restrict change. Systems of power may be simplified, but the implications are wide-ranging and applicable.

Go to the Game Page on the Bill of Rights Institute

Download the Print and Play

Curriculum for Regime Game

Regime is a quick to learn game that focuses on Government frameworks, and the way people can't affect our restrict change. Players have the opportunity to see how ballots wealth, governing power, weapons and religion impact political regimes and the effect of outside forces and citizens rising up.

There is a very clear educational objective with many supporting elements on the website The Bill of Rights Institute. The Regime game provides High School Humanities students with a safe place to explore and experiment with different governing methods such as the differences between representative democracy and direct democracy. Questions arise, such as: What happens when anarchy takes over? and, How do we interact with each other in an oligarchy or an autocracy without knowing our neighbor's hidden belief structure.

Visually the game is bold and not complicated to understand. There are a few issues with accessibility on the cards with the rank numbers being too low contrast for those with visual impairments or to be played in dark rooms. Raising that contrast would help all players access the game equally.

Other areas of improvement could include creating higher contrast visuals on the political regimes blue sections, and the economic regime green sections. Although these visuals are not required for understanding gameplay, they could be a way to enhance the aesthetics of the game, and connect iconic visuals to the topics in game.

It's exciting to see that there is a print and play version of the game so that schools with limited resources are able to access the game with smaller budgets. Similar to other games on the website, this judge recommends for how to play video which will be incredibly helpful in the classroom when there is often only 20 minutes to play, which includes going over the instructions.

The amount of negotiation and speaking up for oneself in the gameplay is an excellent strategy for teaching civics in schools. The expectation that a regime will shift during gameplay makes some players hold onto a variety of such as voting and coins, while other students experiment with holding all kinds of power through the throne hoarding.