I am a climate scientist. Is Pampero a climate game?
This review was originally posted on BoardGameGeek.com on 10/17/24.
The country of Uruguay runs on ~98% clean, renewable energy¹.
The actual percentage varies from year to year, but it’s always pretty damn good these days.
Did you know this? I’m a climate scientist, and I didn’t. I wish this were common knowledge. What’s even more shocking is that this energy transition happened in under a decade. A massive climate victory – tangible proof that we can do the “impossible.”
And yet, the word “climate” is nowhere to be found in Pampero, a game about this energy transition.
There was no “Big Green” lobby backing up the windmills. No idealists touting signs and slogans. There was a particle physicist, an energy crisis, and the trappings of a eurogame.
This box is big. The context is bigger. Uruguay’s story needs to be told. Does Julián Pombo tell it well? Who is this game for?
Let’s dive in.
I suffer from a US-centric education. If, in February, you had put a gun to my head and asked me to name a single fact about the country of Uruguay, I probably could not have done it. Since then, I’ve done some homework, but I’m still out of my lane². Here’s the (vastly abbreviated) scoop, as I understand it:
Around the turn of the century, Uruguay is in crisis. A climate crisis, to be sure – but the blackouts are more immediately pressing. Energy demand is rising, but supply cannot meet it. There are no fossil fuels to burn, no more rivers to dam up. Neighbors Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, facing similar problems, sell their oil at disgruntling prices.
At this time, Dr. Ramón Méndez Galain is a professor of physics at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay. He had some experience in nuclear physics, but he hadn’t thought much about wind turbines before. Nonetheless, amidst an energy crisis, he decides he is not above a bit of quarterbacking³.
Méndez Galain giving his TED Talk.
He weighs the options. Importing fossil fuels makes Uruguay dependent on what it cannot control. Nuclear? Too expensive. Wind, though – there might be enough of that. Uruguay is second only to the U.S. Great Plains in how often it experiences “severe convective activity” (e.g., hella wind and storms)⁴. It would work, if only they had the infrastructure.
Méndez Galain publishes his thoughts and puts the matter away. There’s not much more he can do. After all, it’s not like he’s Uruguay’s energy secretary.
A short time later, Méndez Galain receives a call.
The president of Uruguay likes his plan.
Méndez Galain becomes Uruguay’s energy secretary.
When you play a game of Pampero, you’re tasked with providing energy to the whole of Uruguay. If you screw it up, you try again tomorrow, or perhaps eject Pampero from your collection and mind. Méndez Galain doesn’t have the luxury of take-backsies, no magic circle to fall back on. Nor does the government give him much money to work with. No experience, no budget – how does he do it?
The answer is deliciously elegant. The wind energy companies haul all their shit to Uruguay and front the cost of the construction. In return, the government pinky-promises to purchase the energy at a fixed rate – for decades. The company is guaranteed it will make its investment back, and that fixed rate is above the norm. Uruguay, on the other hand, no longer finds itself at the mercy of the market. They know exactly how much they’re paying for the electricity, and it’s certainly less than importing fossil fuels.
This begins as an auction system for a handful of contracts, with wind energy companies bidding against each other. Who will front the construction cost and sell the energy for the lowest rate? When the auctions open up, more than twenty companies place bids – far more than anticipated. Ultimately, they do away with the auction system entirely, signing contracts with many different companies.
Wind turbines in the countryside outside Maldonado, Uruguay in 2017. Photo credit: DFLC Prints
By 2018, Uruguay installs more than 1500 megawatts of wind capacity. Uruguay no longer has blackouts – instead, it’s selling surplus energy to its neighbors. Hundreds of wind turbines are built on pastures that belong to small, local farmers. These farmers receive money for this use of their land, with no detriment to the cows grazing amidst the turbines. Thousands of jobs are created. While everyday consumers don’t see their energy bills decrease, the Uruguayan government funnels the savings into social support systems. Poverty drops drastically, and Uruguay is now home to a burgeoning middle class⁵. Méndez Galain goes on to facilitate energy transition in other Latin American countries⁶. Julián Pombo goes on to design a game.
All this, and “decarbonization” never once takes center stage.
Unlike Daybreak or Earthborne Rangers, Pampero does not present a hypothetical. The story – the true story – of Uruguay’s energy transition is fascinating and hopeful. It is medicine for climate despair; a blueprint for others to follow. We need to know, and feel, that restructuring an entire country’s energy infrastructure is not only possible, but done, and that it can come with a host of other benefits to boot.
My eyes lit up when a review copy of Pampero arrived on my doorstep, kindly provided to me by the publisher, APE Games⁷. Watching Méndez Galain’s TED Talk was one thing – could I discern a regular Uruguayan citizen’s take by playing this game? How is the story told by, or enhanced by, the medium of a game? I offer you my personal assessment of the vibes, for whatever that may be worth to you.
On the title and cover art:
Pampero’s box art, by good ol’ Ian O’Toole.
Y’all, Ian O’Toole understood the assignment. Take a look at this etymology:
Pampero, “a cold and dry southwesterly wind in Argentina,” is a direct borrowing from Latin American Spanish, in which the term literally means “of the pampas.” Pampas are the vast grassy plains typical of southern South America that are especially common in Argentina, and pampa is a loanword from Quechua, in which it means “flat, unbounded plain.”
In fact, “flat, unbounded plains” are at the climatological heart of the high winds in Uruguay. Topography – whether it be mountains, trees, buildings, or otherwise – causes friction, which slows wind down. This cover art is definitely giving “flat, unbounded plain,” as well as the accompanying wind. The blue and white stripes are giving Uruguay, but they don’t scream it. That’s okay – the Spanish title further grounds the setting. I appreciate that they didn’t pander to English-speaking audiences; “Winds of Uruguay” would’ve been a far worse title.
Overall, in a sea of blue-green boxes, Pampero stands out like a wind turbine on the horizon. That’s good for getting Uruguay’s story told. Kudos.
On the rulebook and flavor:
I’m not much into dry, heavy eurogames. Arguably, I was more excited to look at the flavor text than I was to actually play the game.
I was disappointed, then, to see only a handful of words grace the front cover of the rulebook. And – shoot! They’re copy-pasted from the back of the box! I was hoping for at least half a page of real estate here, if not a supplemental lore booklet.
The text that does exist is good. It’s the minimum amount of context needed to understand the broad strokes of both theme and mechanics. But it misses out on the bits that make the reality so extraordinary. For example – in real life, the timespan of the transition was extraordinarily short, taking about a decade. The game lasts a comparable number of “years.” Pointing out to the player that the game’s timespan reflects reality is a missed “wow” moment. There is no mention of an energy “crisis,” nor the myriad co-benefits of an energy transition.
Arguably, these omissions make thematic sense. You’re playing as a wind energy corporation interested in profit. You don’t really care about the energy crisis and the blackouts. “Helping people” does not factor into your company’s budget.
This framing feels deliberate. The point isn’t to preach to the choir about how renewables are cool/eco-friendly/good. The point is to show that renewables can truly be the most economic option, rather than expensive toys for rich liberals who want to feel good about themselves. I think it’s a valid take, and it might speak to those who are on the fence about renewables.
The omission that does get my goat? It’s never stated that Pampero is about a real thing that actually happened! Does this need to be specified? Yes, it absolutely does. I will never forget working at a board game shop in Cascadia and seeing an article about the game Cascadia refer to Cascadia as a “fictional region⁹.”
Most board games tell stories that are explicitly fictional. It’s hard to shake that assumption.
“Environmental” games are no exception. Think about your other favorite blue-green box. Does it tell you a real story about human events? Probably not. Most blue-green boxes give you a glimpse into some idealized ecosystem. If humans are involved, it’s either a) an amazing, hypothetical solarpunk future that you’d prefer to live in, or b) simulating real life, and the humans are the bad guys. Pampero does not fit into these tropes.
If there is any change I would recommend for a second printing, should the publisher be open to advice, this is it. Slap some dates or something on there. Don’t assume that people will get curious and start googling facts about the Uruguayan energy transition. That’s just a me thing.
On production:
Yeah, this game is overproduced. It’s plasticky, it’s giant, and it’s a table hog¹⁰. I’m not going to harp on this. It doesn’t take a scientist to point it out. In fact, the publisher is well aware.
An excerpt from the publisher’s response after I asked for a review copy.
What he had “just told me there” prior to this excerpt were his many reasons behind his production choices. I’m not going to disclose this whole email, but basically, I understand and support much of what he told me. I don’t think this production is wholly evil, and I don’t think you should get out your pitchforks and torches. I just wanted to be transparent with you, dear reader, that I’m not doing a deep dive on production on the wishes of the publisher.
Is it worth producing Pampero, at some environmental cost, so that Uruguay’s story can be told through the eyes of a Uruguayan designer? If you buy this game, and you share it with your friends, and you talk about the context with them, and you derive joy and meaning and fun from owning this game, then perhaps it is justifiable. I leave this calculus up to you¹¹.
On the narrative and gameplay:
In Pampero, you head up a wind energy company. You’re fulfilling contracts in five different flavors (remote, residential, commercial, industrial, and resort). To fulfill these contracts, you’ll be building wind turbines and other various bits and bobs.
Does art imitate life? Not exactly. Pampero blurs the lines between the private and governmental responsibilities. In Pampero, you generate the electricity and you choose where it ends up. If you want to ship some extra energy to Brazil, that’s your prerogative. In the nonfictional Uruguay, a governmental monopoly-utility called the UTE has full control over the distribution of the electricity. This is the same entity that’s putting all these contracts up for grabs and purchasing every watt of energy generated. Should surplus energy be sold to Brazil, the government makes the profit, not the wind company/player.
I think it’s interesting how closely Pampero’s board somewhat mirrors this map of UTE divisions of energy distribution¹.
Does art need to imitate life? Eh. Not in a UTE-simulator sense. But I do wish Pampero gave a sense of the energy transition and the importance of energy sovereignty. In these areas, I think a lot of room for thematic creativity went completely untapped. What if your income depended on the strength of the winds each season? What if UTE contracts could get snapped up by the other 16+ wind companies not represented by the four players? What if the auction framework of Méndez Galain’s initial strategy had been preserved in the mechanics? What if you had some sort of worker placement mechanics that simulated training up a local wind energy workforce?
I dunno. I’m not a game designer. I just think that, if the wind turbines were replaced with fossil fuel plants, the player wouldn’t notice any massive thematic dissonance. But again, I suspect this was a deliberate choice, which I also support. Maybe Pampero isn’t a “climate game,” but it doesn’t need to be, if the point is to simply normalize renewables.
Is the art fun? Is art more fun than life? Despite the fact that I’m supposedly “not that into big dry eurogames,” I found myself quite enjoying the gameplay of Pampero. I had fun, even when I wasn’t very good at it. I thought the rulebook was well-structured and a smooth, streamlined read. I wouldn’t want to face the iconography without a reference guide, but I’ve seen much worse. Once we knew what we were doing, turns got faster, downtime shrank, and numbers went up during and between games in a very pleasing fashion. It’s fine. It didn’t blow my mind. I think it could’ve been balanced better, but maybe it irons out the more you play it?
Concluding thoughts
I think Pampero is a good game based off an amazing true story. I think Pampero fails to live up to its potential. I don’t think that makes it bad. I bet expansions, house rules, or a second edition could improve upon it.
Above all, I hope Julián Pombo got to design the game he wanted to design. I hope he told the story he wanted to tell. In the end, it wasn’t the story I wanted it to tell – but that doesn’t matter¹². I’m a climate scientist, but Pombo is the expert here. I trust that he made his thematic decisions deliberately. I think there’s great value in highlighting renewable energy outside the context of climate change, “just transitions,” or whatever else. For Uruguayans, wind energy is the new normal, and Pampero is just kind of a normal energy game. This is a normal energy board game for normal board gamers. There just happen to be wind turbines around. That’s it. There’s merit to that.
Do you agree? What was your impression of Pampero before you read this? Does knowing the context make you want to play the game more? I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can purchase a copy of Pampero from the publisher’s website.
If you like this kind of thing (you nerd), you can find me at my new (and somewhat barren) website, haleystaudmyer.com. You can sign up for my email newsletter to be notified when I do another review (or cool science). You might also spot me in the wild at upcoming PineCon or PAXU.
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Footnotes: citations & asides
1. Corrêa, K.C., Uriona-Maldonado, M., Vaz, C.R., 2022. The evolution, consolidation and future challenges of wind energy in Uruguay. Energy Pol. 161, 112758. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112758.
2. My actual research focuses on extreme heat and its impacts on human health.
3. I hope it’s obvious that this single guy isn’t behind 100% of Uruguay’s energy transition. I’m sure lots of people worked together to make this happen. I don’t mean to diminish their contributions; it’s just that much of the easily accessible information about the Uruguayan energy transition focuses on Méndez Galain.
4. Zipser, E.J., Liu, C., Cecil, D.J., Nesbitt, S.W., et al., 2006. Where are the most intense thunderstorms on Earth? Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 87, 1057–1071.
5. My retelling of this story is cobbled together from a few different sources. Here are some that are not otherwise linked or cited, for your own further reading:
a. The Uruguay Way: Achieving Energy Sovereignty in the Developing World – Earth.Org
b. Uruguay’s green power revolution: rapid shift to wind shows the world how it’s done – The Guardian
c. How did Uruguay cut carbon emissions? The answer is blowing in the wind – NPR’s Planet Money
6. I’d really like to tell you more about Asociación Ivy, the . . . association? Nonprofit? Well, Méndez Galain founded it, whatever it is. I can’t figure out exactly what it is they do. The website is scant, and most information is outdated by a few years.
7. I emailed APE Games asking for a review copy, and APE Games agreed to send me one. One day, when I am not on a graduate student’s salary⁸, I will purchase the board games I review. At the moment, it’s not in the budget.
8. Contrary to popular belief, climate scientists aren’t just in it for the grant money.
9. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a link to this article, but the moment is preserved by Cascadia’s designer’s post on X.
10. For the record, I actually don’t mind that the map of Uruguay itself is as big as it is. I thought it was a very cool design choice that the places for your windmills and electrical towers are very spread out in the rural areas, but very cramped near the nation’s capital, Montevideo. It gives the player a good sense for the actual population density of the country.
11. Besides, I could write negative reviews for most board game productions with my eyes closed. It wouldn’t be very interesting content. I do plan on doing some deeper dives on production again in the future – potentially, the near future – but I don’t strive to be a one-trick pony.
12. If you’ve read this far, then the story I wanted to be told has been told. So, I’ve got that going for me, at least.
My hearty thanks to APE Games, Julián Pombo, my beta readers, and NPI, for some words of wisdom. Check out NPI’s review if you want to hear more about the game’s mechanics.