Strange Weather We’re Having
Welcome to Brightbrook USA, home to your friends, your family, and your neighbors. The climate around us is changing and we need act fast to save our town. We're talking wildfires, flash floods, and a whole bunch of nasty things. The more we talk about how climate change impacts us, the more we can recognize how to build more resilient and equitable communities.
Designer
Ben McLauchlin
Duration
Sept 2020 - August 2021
Committee
Mike Strobert & Adam Smith
Focus
UI/UX Design, Graphic Design
We don’t talk about climate change with our friends and family and that’s a problem.
The systemic harm of climate change will continue to impact us if we continue to avoid addressing what we can do to help.
Strange Weather We’re Having
Strange Weather We’re Having is a semi-cooperative board game designed to cultivate conversation, inspire joy, and spread awareness about what you can do to help against climate change.
Semi-Cooperative - supportive mechanics
Design for Joy - bold, compelling visuals
A Social Space - learning through play
Climate Change
The climate crisis is actively hurting you, me, and everyone else whether we realize it or not. The more we can do to inspire conversation and systemic action, the better off we’ll all be in the years to come.
How it Hurts You
Climate change worsens existing harm and generates new challenges, most of which can we categorized into 5 major types of impacts:
Extreme Heat
Extreme Weather
Deadly Diseases
Air Quality
Social Stress
3 Guiding Principles
Semi-Cooperative Design
A semi-cooperative format was chosen to show how we are all connected. Like in the game, our time is fleeting, so how we spend our time and energy matters.
The Crisis Counter and restricted time encourage us to discuss and plan through our actions as a unit, mirroring the same kind of cooperation we need in the real world.
Designed for Joy
Wow, look at these visuals. Stunning. Vibrant. Bold. They look like windows into a world that is always moving, always changing. That is intentional.
Strange Weather We’re Having is meant to be an interpretation of real life experiences. It focuses on struggles and the hope of a better future.
It celebrates the joys of life and pushes us to think about how we spend our limited time with those we care about.
A Social Space to Play
Strange Weather We're Having mirrors many of the challenges we face in our own communities and builds on real, tested climate change facts.
The game focuses on realistic actions that the average American can do and celebrates a vision of hope that forms the basis of its mechanics and visuals.
It is all designed to inspire action and instill delight in those who play.
The Game
Climate change disrupts daily life on massive scales. Crisis Cards emulate that disruption by inching players closer towards destruction.
The Event Mat symbolizes the passage of time and your progress as you resolve Event Cards before time runs out.
Event Cards symbolize the 5 major types of harm caused by climate change in their least harmful states.
Players may take on the role of a character from a diverse community, whose residents have unique representation and personality.
Community Cards prevent some harm from climate change. They symbolize actions that may be done by individuals.
Don’t draw too many Crisis Cards, or else your Crisis Counter will tick up too high! If it hits Critical, everyone loses.
Why a Board Game?
Board games are social by design. They cultivate communal spaces where friends and family can connect with each other through a fantastic, shared experience.
Games give us permission to experiment, to question ourselves, and to think critically about problems without actually living through them.
The medium of a board game is precisely the type of format that can turn an often misunderstood topic like climate change into an immersive and fun experience.
Who is this for?
People with the Power
Every American is impacted by climate change and those of us who are harmed the most are featured as playable characters in Strange Weather We’re Having.
People in the game’s diverse community may be predisposed to the same impacts as each other.
This reflects on how we can relate to each other through our struggles and that actions that help yourself may likely benefit those around you.
The Strange Weather System
Supportive, Dynamic, and Bold
Click here to view the Strange Weather System, the underlying design behind this iconic board game.
Learn How to Play
Strange Weather We’re Having Game Manual PDF
Click the PDF to learn how to play. (File size is 29MB)
