Daybreak: A climate scientist’s first impressions and review
The following post is copy & pasted from my original review, posted on BoardGameGeek.com on 11/18/23. I haven’t had time to make all the formatting here as pretty as it is there, or implement the pretty pictures. But, hopefully, you get the idea.
Hi everyone. Never written up an in-depth review of a game before, but I thought I could bring a unique perspective here. Please note this will perhaps be more narrative and less methodical than most reviews.
Back in October of 2022, I was terribly sad to pass up backing Daybreak. I had just moved to southern California to begin my PhD, and it turns out that moving is very expensive. I didn't feel like I could justify the extra cost. So I was delighted for Daybreak to alight on my doorstep this Wednesday, courtesy of my BGG Secret Santa. My fiancé and I were able to squeeze in a single game over the past couple days, and I wanted to type out some thoughts while they're fresh in my mind.
Ethos
For more personal context, I am a climate scientist at the University of California. I study extreme heat and its impacts on human health. Specifically, my project has to do with understanding what our future in a warmer world may look like. In terms of Daybreak cards, I would say my work aligns most with Systemic Risk Planning, Early Warning Systems, and Adaptation Programs. Though there is a difference between informing folks of risk and acting on that information. I don't necessarily spend my time creating early warning systems or adaptation programs, but in theory, the science I do might help others do that down the line.
I am no tenured professor, no revered name in the field, but a climate scientist nonetheless. I received my Bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in Seattle, where I majored in atmospheric sciences. Prior to my PhD work, I worked on research projects examining the impacts of topography on rainfall, clouds in the tropical Pacific, and heat wave trends in the Pacific Northwest.
I also worked at the most incredible FLGS in the PNW during a gap year between undergrad and grad school. Daybreak is the 245th unique game I've logged a play of. So all this to say, I exist pretty squarely at this niche nexus of climate + board gaming. However, I am not necessarily an expert in decarbonization, which is a major theme of Daybreak (though not the only one).
Art and Science Communication
Allow me to wax eloquent on the production for a moment. I am no stranger to games with beautiful art, but never has the art of a game nearly moved me to tears. I truly cannot commend the artists enough for their work here. I want this art printed for my walls. I want it as my desktop background. I'll probably use it in future PowerPoints.
The Crisis cards in particular are quietly devastating, evoking images not of shocking disasters and gruesome deaths, but rather subtle and small moments of hardship that reflect the everyday experience of climate change. Crisis is not always one terrible, life-altering event; it is the accumulation of many grievances over time. I was particularly taken with the art of Democracy Erosion. I have been this person, sadly watching corruption play out on national television. I am sure others may see their struggles reflected in this art as well.
Not only is the art a massive undertaking -- hundreds of unique pieces, each beautiful and moving in its own way -- but each card comes with its own QR code providing more information about the topic. What an incredible feat of science communication! I have not had time to read all of them, of course, but I am flabbergasted by the effort and care the creators took here. The ones that I have read all seem well-written and provide good sources. A QR code is not so snappy or bite-sized as a Wingspan bird fun fact, but the topics at hand require more nuance than can properly fit on a card. A young person might open this box and find literally hundreds of career paths to explore. The website is also where all of the art pieces for the cards can be found, and I think it is cool of them to make those assets so publicly available. Kudos to the team here.
Science
As aforementioned, decarbonization is not my niche, so take this evaluation with a grain of salt. Perhaps stay tuned for a second post after I play with my other climate scientist friends, including a decarbonization expert.
Though the game is clearly well-researched, I felt as though the impacts of the climate crisis were somewhat understated. The heart of my gripe is that all of the possible bad things presented in Daybreak are, in reality, happening simultaneously and in a deeply connected fashion.
Any "climate science 101" course will quickly cover feedback loops. For example, when sea ice melts, it exposes the dark ocean surface beneath. This ocean surface does not reflect away as much sunlight as the bright ice used to, so the area gets warmer. This helps to further melt the surrounding ice in a positive feedback loop. There are also negative feedback loops, wherein the original warming signal is dampened. For example, in some areas of the world, an increase in carbon dioxide might aid in photosynthesis, allowing plants to take up more carbon than they used to. The original increase in carbon dioxide created an outcome that reduced the carbon dioxide in the air.
Our climate system is chock-full of such feedbacks and comprise a good chunk of what my colleagues study. There are so many feedbacks among the atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere! I felt the lack of explicit feedback loops portrayed here was a missed opportunity. Sure, maybe you roll the Planetary Effects die and end up with carbon in some form or fashion, which will make you roll again in the future -- perhaps representing a feedback loop where harm to one system eventually causes harm to another. But I would've preferred a more obvious linkage between various earth systems. As it stands, it can sometimes feel like desertification happens very quickly while Arctic sea ice is totally fine.
I have yet to play with the Challenge cards . . . Perhaps some of them address this.
As far as the impacts depicted by the Planetary Effects die and the crisis cards, I think they are well in line with what we can expect in real life. I think "Dieback of the Amazon" was a bit of a strange choice. Other important rainforests will surely be worse for wear as well, and I think much of the Amazon's struggles in particular come from deforestation rather than climate change, and I'm not sure that distinction is made clear to the player.
I hesitated at how oceans and trees were presented as equally effective carbon sinks, but I need to brush up on some things before I speak more on that. I'll edit this post when I can.
I was somewhat grumbly about how carbon was represented, but there's no getting around it mechanically. You see, climate scientists are really interested in Earth's "climate sensitivity," which is essentially the amount of temperature rise one can expect from a given amount of carbon. And since the amount of carbon needed to cause a 0.1°C temperature rise in Daybreak varies with player count, there is no consistent climate sensitivity here! Ah well. This problem is solved by having a single cube of carbon representing a different amount emissions per player count. I wish the designers had left a note describing this conversion -- I don't care to calculate it myself!
Now, as for the science of the myriad technologies and strategies showcased by the game. I love that the game presents such a wide variety of solutions. We truly do need a mosaic of approaches -- there is no silver-bullet technology or project that can alone save us. I was pleased to see how difficult the geoengineering cards were to pull off, as some folks do see geoengineering (e.g. direct removal of CO2 from the air) as a silver bullet. I was also very pleased to see social movements and regulations presented alongside technology.
I am sure the creators relied on Drawdown, at least in part, to inspire solutions. I would encourage you all to check Drawdown out as a comprehensive resource of climate solutions. Drawdown ranks its solution in terms of potential carbon uptake. Some of those calculations are done in-house by Drawdown, and I sometimes find them more optimistic than realistic. Nonetheless, one is hard-pressed to find an alternative resource that is as cited as Drawdown, and if I had been on Daybreak's team I would've relied on Drawdown as well.
In general, I can't say that I saw a Local or Global Project card that made me think, "Hmm, that isn't a thing." All the solutions presented are not only viable but necessary to happen in real life if we are to properly act on climate.
Mechanics
Daybreak is some solid, beautiful, dopamine-releasing number-go-up fun. I feel so lucky to have a game in my collection I can show to folks that will make teaching Terraforming Mars down the line much easier! I love the weight of this game -- complicated enough to have plenty to it, but accessible enough to not scare any new gamers away.
I won't speak on the mechanics in detail, as I'm sure plenty of others will cover them better than I could. Suffice it to say that I felt the game played smooth as butter, and I had a lot of fun.
Depiction of Screwedness
People often ask me, when hearing of my career, "Are we screwed?" I haven't yet 100% nailed down my opinion on this, because to be quite honest, it doesn't seem to matter much to me. There is certainly danger with climate change -- that's why we care in the first place. We're certainly not "totally fine," as things stand. If we aren't "screwed," but rather some less-dire-but-not-great description, then we can reduce harm by acting. If we are terribly, inexorably screwed, well, I refuse to believe it. I'm certainly not just going to sit down and accept that. So no matter how "screwed" we are, we have to act on climate, and the sooner we act, the less screwed we'll be.
Now, from a psychology standpoint, studies have proven over and over again that fear-based narratives do not inspire action. Rather, hopeful narratives inspire action. I can find sources if y'all would like. This causes some rift in the climate communication community. There are some who bemoan the state of our world, who continue to preach fear-based, "doomer," alarmist messages. Others provide a sunny, positive outlook, posting all the time about climate wins in the form of legislation and technology. And there are folks along the entire spectrum in between. Those in the former camp accuse those in the latter of "lying about the reality of the situation." Those in the latter camp accuse those in the former of disregarding the proven psychology behind bringing people to action, as well as willfully ignoring the progress we are making.
Does Daybreak present a false narrative, too hopeful to be anywhere near to accurate? Hmm. My initial take is that, given one playthrough on its standard difficulty, Daybreak is perhaps over-optimistic on our ability to get our shit together. But I expect adding in some more Challenge cards would create a more nuanced and accurately difficult depiction. I would also challenge anyone to sift through the dozens of QR codes and come away feeling truly hopeless. Like I said before, every single Project depicted is a real and viable strategy for combatting climate change. With so many at our disposal, and with so many of them bringing so many non-climate related benefits to our lives to boot, I am hard-pressed to believe there's nothing to them.
The game is lost if the global average temperature increases by 2°C. I believe we will reach this level of warming, likely within my lifetime, before the end of the century. All climate scientists think climate change is real and human caused, but not all would agree that we'll reach 2°C. 2°C of warming is when Daybreak is lost, based off the same benchmark used in things like the Paris Agreement. As I've alluded to already, 2°C is a somewhat arbitrary benchmark in my opinion. I don't think that 2°C is some magic tipping point, where if we reach it, we're extremely screwed, but 1.9°C of warming would be fine. But there is an entire report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change detailing how much more "screwed" we'd be at 2°C versus 1.5°C. Overall, with the prominence of 2°C as a global goal of warming to avoid, it certainly makes the most sense to use it as the lose condition -- I would've made the same choice. But just remember that there's never a reason to roll over and give up, even if within your lifetime 2°C starts looking more like an immediate reality.
Comparison to Other Climate Games
Back in 2019, I happily marched into the FLGS I would later go on to work at and bought myself a birthday present: Vital Lacerda's CO2: Second Chance. Since then, it has hit the table exactly two and a half times. Yikes. But who would want to play it? Lacerda specifically didn't want solving the climate crisis to appear trivial, so the game is pretty brutal. It's got all the rules one would expect from a Lacerda game. The first full game I finished, the teach took far longer than the game because we lost so quickly. Even among my other climate scientist friends, who are also board gamers, it is a hard sell.
There is no doubt in my mind that Daybreak is the most accessible, accurate, and educational game in the genre, though CO2 to my knowledge is the best direct comparison. There are, of course, innumerable games about energy systems, and some of them include depictions of renewables -- I am particularly interested to try out Pampero soon -- but very few that deal with large-scale, global decarbonization in the same way.
The optimistic climate-y game I did back on Kickstarter was Earthborne Rangers, which I simply adore! EBR represents the future I want to live in; Daybreak represents the next-best future I could actually get to live in. EBR is a fundamentally different game to Daybreak, but there are still some comparisons I'd like to draw. Specifically regarding manufacturing. Having kept up with the EBR development podcast and having worked for a FLGS, I feel like I have some good insight into game production and distribution. Both EBR and Daybreak are making great strides in terms of sustainable production, and I commend them both for eschewing plastic and reaching for FSC-certified paper. I laughed a bit when I saw the tuckboxes in Daybreak, so tight that you can barely fit the cards in them, when compared to the empty space in the EBR box. Daybreak clearly will not entertain your desire to sleeve your cards. The "officially-sanctioned" EBR solution is to sleeve your hands, not your cards de-sleeve a game you're no longer playing and reuse sleeves. I . . . did not do this. There was nothing I could stand to de-sleeve in my collection other than Fort, which wouldn't be nearly enough sleeves! So sue me.
Despite not being a fan of EBR's closest cousin, Arkham Horror LCG, I decided to back in no small part due to the promise of local manufacturing. A huge part of the carbon footprint of board games is the trip across the Pacific from factories in China. I was so impressed when EBR promised local, North American manufacturing for North American backers! . . . And I was subsequently disappointed when this stretch goal reward was not achieved. Having followed along with the podcast, I don't fault the EBR team for this -- it seems there quite literally wasn't a single factory on the continent that was able to produce what they needed on the timeframe they needed. Producing the game at a factory in Germany still did a great deal to reduce the carbon footprint. Anyway, all this to say that I wish Daybreak had followed suit and tried to produce more locally. The more game designers even inquire to stateside factories about producing with them, the more inclined the factories will be to get the necessary equipment to make it happen. Or, at least, that's what I would hope would happen.
Other specifically climate-related games I own are Kyoto and Evolution: Climate, though they are even farther removed from Daybreak. Evolution: Climate is the current reigning favorite climate-related game among my group of climate scientist/board gaming friends, and I would highly recommend it. Kyoto is fairly pessimistic in its take. Though I appreciate its satire, it's nothing extremely interesting or novel. Other games I've played have more to do with nature in a broad sense than climate in particular.
Conclusion
Daybreak will certainly be a mainstay of my collection for decades to come. I am smitten with this game. The world is a better place because it exists. It's not perfect, but no game and no depiction of climate change is.
What I love most about this game is its celebration of people and community. So many pro-climate, pro-environment messages center around the beauty and grandeur of nature. I believe this is why so many of these messages fall flat. It's not that no one cares about polar bears or the rainforest. They are beautiful and sacred, and no one with good intentions truly wants anything bad to happen to them. But, frankly, neither polar bears nor the rainforest are in most folks' backyards. They are distant, faraway resources, irrelevant to our everyday lives. So it becomes easier and easier to leave these problems for others to consider.
Daybreak, in contrast, centers the human cost of climate change and the benefits solutions might bring to humans. Having Communities in Crisis be a measure of distress was a perfect choice. We suffer if we do not act, and we benefit if we do. Climate change is in our lives, in our backyards, in our communities, and Daybreak's art and design do an excellent job of depicting that.
Do you need Daybreak if you own Wingspan, Terraforming Mars, or the other games that inspired it? Mechanically speaking, no. But do you want a window into the world's most important problem and its solutions? Are you due for a little bit of hope in your life? Is there a kid in your life you might want to inspire?
Take a look at this image from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. If you live in America, look at where you live and how little folks around you discuss climate change even occasionally. This image makes me so sad. One of humanity's greatest challenges is upon us, and we still barely talk about it.
Daybreak will facilitate the conversations we need to turn this map orange, at least in some small part. I believe turning this map orange is the single most important barrier we need to overcome to act on climate. And so, I am indebted to the team behind Daybreak for this labor of love and care. What a beautiful, approachable, and hopeful object this is. Thank you.
EDIT: I remain blown away and endlessly grateful for the positive response to this piece! More content where this came from coming down the pipe. Please feel free to visit me at my (new and rudimentary) website: https://haleystaudmyer.com/