Type: Card game
Theme: Nature and the environment
Creator: Sondog Studios
Grassroots is a family-friendly party game that challenges you to use your knowledge and curiosity about the natural world in a race to restore Earth.
We are currently in the last week of our Kickstarter campaign to bring Grassroots to life (posted 14/06/24). In this blog post we share an overview of what Grassroots is all about, how you play the game and our motivations behind creating it. You can also find details of our Kickstarter campaign here and at the bottom of this post.
How to play Grassroots
Teams of two or more players take turns selecting challenges that require you to Guess, List, Act and Describe your way through all things related to Earth’s ecosystems. The challenges will require you to either work together or battle against the other team(s). They also test different skills so be prepared to get creative: guess the distance of the longest ever whale migration; list every country that has more than two time zones; act like an Emperor penguin or describe a prickly pear cactus in five words or fewer. The challenge cards contain fun facts that are designed to take you by surprise, impress your friends or inspire you to delve deeper into new corners of the natural world.
The play time depends on the number of teams, but quick games usually last around 15 minutes, whilst longer games last around 45 minutes. The game works best with 4+ players (2x teams of 2), but we have included rule variants for a 2-player version based on demand from our play testers. Our recommended age range is 7+, although younger players can still play with a little more support from their team.
Makers of Grassroots
Grassroots was designed by a team of 4 friends united by our love of playing games and the natural world. I’m Helen Mackay, an Assistant Professor of Geography at Durham University. My research focuses on reconstructing past environmental change. I examine the ways in which climate and humans have been shaping ecosystems over thousands of years and assess how resilient these ecosystems are to disturbance events and change. I’ve always enjoyed participating in outreach events and I first made games to help communicate my organic chemical research to school children. Grassroots is an exciting opportunity to help share my love of Geography and nature with wider audiences.
I’ve been creating the design and content of Grassroots with Dan, who loves all things related to nature and is at his happiest when climbing a mountain, walking the dog in a forest or swimming in the sea. Dan is also a finance professional, so he manages our games company Sondog Studios.
Our beautiful card art and design is created by Holly, who has recently pursued her interest of user experience (UX) by going back to university to study for a Master’s degree. We are always amazed at the incredible designs Holly produces alongside her full-time work and degree.
The fourth member of our team is Alex who brings a wealth of industry experience to the group and is a super passionate runner who loves being out on the trails.
Creating Grassroots together with friends has been an absolute delight and we hope our passion for the game and the natural world comes through as you play the game.
Why we made Grassroots
We created Grassroots as a fun way of bringing people together and helping them to connect with each other as well as the world around them. We also believe that people are more likely to protect the Earth if they care about it, so we wanted Grassroots to showcase our amazing planet and all reasons that we can be inspired by it.
The play testing for Grassroots has been incredibly rewarding. There is no better feeling than seeing children light up while they describe their favourite animal (often throwing in some curveballs as they put their unique spin on it) or attempting the challenge of acting out of a tornado (we quickly learnt to clear as much space as possible!). Some of my fantastic Physical Geography colleagues have also put Grassroots well and truly through its paces, with the list questions proving to be a big hit (turns out it’s even tricky for fluvial geoscientists to name the 10 longest rivers in the world!). I was incredibly relieved that all our hard work researching the questions and facts paid off when they stood up to scrutiny and to see that everyone had fun playing the game. It has also been fantastic to share the game with people who wouldn’t consider themselves to be interested in games or nature. These players became hooked after they tried some cards out and realised that you don’t need to have lots of detailed knowledge but instead can use creative thinking, humour and knowledge about how each other think to win the game.
Ensuring that Grassroots is inclusive, entertaining, enlightening and eco-friendly has been at the heart of all aspects of our game design. The different types of challenges emerged from the fact that we didn’t want anyone to be worried that they ‘didn’t know enough’ to play. The challenges are set up so you can definitely use any trivia knowledge to your advantage, but you will also need to think logically and creatively together your team to win.
What’s next for Grassroots and how to get involved?
Our Kickstarter campaign to print Grassroots runs until 5pm on Wed 18th June 2024. You can pledge on Kickstarter to get your very own copy of Grassroots using this link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sondogstudios/ecowarriors
You can also follow us on social media to find out more about Grassroots and get live updates on the project:
Games for Geoscience 
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