Fixed, translated Daybreak review

Author: maurovanetti

_posts/2025-02-20-daybreak.md

@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 layout: post
 title: "Review: Daybreak"
 tags: games en
+reference: daybreak
 ---
 
 Daybreak (localised as e-Mission in some languages) is one of my favourite boardgames. It's a game about climate change made by Matteo Menapace, a brilliant Italian game designer that lives in Britain, and the US game designer Matt Leacock, a veritable boardgame celebrity that authored the bestselling co-op game Pandemic long before the 2020 peak in usage of the word. I had the privilege of getting to know Matteo personally when we worked together on a videogame prototype for Games for the Many, a courageous attempt by the Corbyn-era British Labour Party to leverage videogames for political change. I met him several times at different game fairs, festivals and conferences, and I always found him full of unusual ideas, positive energy, intellectual curiosity. Daybreak is the condensed result of these two minds.
@@ -31,11 +32,13 @@ Carbon cubes that are not absorbed at the end of the turn cause several harmful
 
 So, in Daybreak, players have to reduce net Carbon production, aiming for Drawdown, and at the same time prevent an excess of Communities in Crisis. As already explained, Carbon production can be influenced by modifying the energy mix (more green tokens, less dark tokens) and getting rid of the other dark tokens with icons. Communities in Crisis can be prevented by collecting defensive Resilience tokens, and as a last resort by spreading the harm properly among the players -- one player with too many Community in Crisis tokens is enough to make everone lose. In order to pursue these goals, the players run Projects, both Global and Local.
 
-Projects are cards. Beautiful cards, with a nice image, some icons on top, and a symbolic description of their effects. The icons on top are "tags"; tags are used as requirements to activate the card, and sometimes the more icons of a certain tag you have, the stronger the card effect becomes. There is also a QR code in the bottom right corner of each card, if you scan it with your phone you can reach a page [like this](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1044) with the full explanation of the real-life equivalent of the Project and its workings in the game. Projects, when activated, influence the other elements of the game, creating or destroying resources, applying transformations, modifying proper 
+Projects are cards. Beautiful cards, with a nice image, some icons on top, and a symbolic description of their effects. The icons on top are "tags"; tags are used as requirements to activate the card, and sometimes the more icons of a certain tag you have, the stronger the card effect becomes. There is also a QR code in the bottom right corner of each card, if you scan it with your phone you can reach a page [like this](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1044) with the full explanation of the real-life equivalent of the Project and its workings in the game. Projects, when activated, influence the other elements of the game, creating or destroying resources, applying transformations, modifying the parameters of a World Power, and so on. Cards can mostly be used on Local Projects in one of three ways:
+
 - Support an existing Local Project, by tucking a card below an existing stack. This gives more stack tags, which can make the effect stronger, or prepare to fulfill the requirements of another alternative Project.
 - Spend cards to activate a Local Project that requires it.
+- Start a new Local Project, by placing a new card on top of an existing stack. The tags of the cards below are used to fulfill the requirements of the new Project or to make it stronger.
 
-There are many other details, like cards being used to weaken or prevent Global Crisis, but basically this is how the whole system works.
+Basically this is how the whole system works. There are other details in the rule that provide means to directly collaborate across players, like cards being used for Global Projects instead of Local Projects, or to weaken or prevent Global Crisis, or donated to other players under certain conditions.
 
 **PLAY**
 
@@ -81,11 +84,11 @@ So, you play as the government of, say, the United States. Are you Donald Trump
 
 I cannot help mentioning that the game was at the centre of a significant political controversy after winning the Kennerspiel des Jahres prize ("Connoisseur's Game of the Year") in 2024. The fair was during the 2023-2025 Gaza genocide. Matteo Menapace was sporting a Palestine-shaped watermelon pin, to raise awareness for the plight of Palestinian people. Since the fair was in Germany, where every support for Palestinian struggles and liberation is maliciously conflagrated with antisemitism, he was falsely accused of anti-Jewish hate imagery, which is completely ridiculous knowing the guy. He was banned for life, apparently, from taking part in the event, a truly shameful decision by the fair organisers. [He explained his position](https://medium.com/@baddeo/why-i-wear-55cb9459d8e7) and I believe he deserves a lot of respect for that, this incident is risking to affect his career and he surely knew that there was this possibility but he decided to do it anyway for a cause he believes in.
 
-Many Project cards in the game take a political stance, which is both inevitable and healthy for a game like this. Unsurprisingly, in combination with the Essen controversy, those cards have attracted the attention of critics of both the openly right-wing "Trumpian" and the liberal-capitalist free-market types. This is part of the "cultural" sphere, according to the Rules-Play-Culture scheme, in which the game lives and on which it exerts its influence. Some cards advocate open borders as a way to increase climate resilience, e.g. [Climate Immigration](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1109) and [Inclusive Immigration](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1108). Some cards favour collective ownership over private property, e.g. [Fossil Fuel Nationalization](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1044) and [Community Ownership](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1018). Other cards show the link between climate change and social justice, e.g. [Universal Basic Services](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1090) and [Universal Healthcare](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1097). The importance of active participation in political struggles and civic groups are highlighted by cards such as [Social Movements](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1004), [Youth Climate Movement](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1223), [Women’s Empowerment](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1222), [Resilience Volunteers](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1207).
+Many Project cards in the game take a political stance, which is both inevitable and healthy for a game like this. Unsurprisingly, in combination with the Spiel des Jahres controversy, those cards have attracted the attention of critics of both the openly right-wing "Trumpian" and the liberal-capitalist free-market types. This is part of the "cultural" sphere, according to the Rules-Play-Culture scheme, in which the game lives and on which it exerts its influence. Some cards advocate open borders as a way to increase climate resilience, e.g. [Climate Immigration](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1109) and [Inclusive Immigration](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1108). Some cards favour collective ownership over private property, e.g. [Fossil Fuel Nationalization](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1044) and [Community Ownership](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1018). Other cards show the link between climate change and social justice, e.g. [Universal Basic Services](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1090) and [Universal Healthcare](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1097). The importance of active participation in political struggles and civic groups are highlighted by cards such as [Social Movements](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1004), [Youth Climate Movement](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1223), [Women’s Empowerment](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1222), [Resilience Volunteers](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1207).
 
 The design of the cards also takes a negative stance on a few controversial topics. Geoengineering is represented in the game, artificial sequestration has also got its own wooden tokens, but it is no silver bullet: they are exposed as weak and/or very unpredictable technologies, that cannot solve much and only delay the problems a bit -- precisely like in the real world. [Carbon Capture and Storage](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1121) and various forms of nuclear power are useful in the game, but not strictly required to win; the card description on the website is quite sobering about those cards, particularly the Global Project [Nuclear Fusion](https://www.daybreakgame.org/card/1302), an amazing technology if it ever works, but not a viable solution for the current climate crisis with its short timespan. And finally, Matteo Menapace explained that the game does not include a card for "carbon offset" or "carbon credits" because they do not fix any problem on a global scale, they just shift it around.
 
-From my point of view, this is all good and part of the appeal of the game. It's not escapist, and it's not neutral. Its optimism contrasts sharply with the dire straits in which the planet currently is. Instead of fostering dissociation and separation between the game table and the world, it makes you _want_ to fix the world in the same way. You just need to find the right moves to take.
+From my point of view, this is all good and part of the appeal of the game. It's not escapist, and it's not neutral. Its optimism contrasts sharply with the dire straits in which the planet currently is. Instead of fostering dissociation and separation between the game table and the world, it makes you *want* to fix the world in the same way. You just need to find the right moves to take.
 
 ---