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Wingspan game11/26/2023 ![]() Namely, that it is not hyper-competitive and is not rooted in taking over or seizing land, establishing settlements, and relentlessly extracting finite natural resources. The more I’ve played, the more I’ve come to appreciate the ambient aspects of the game. As an amateur birder, I learn something new every time I play. And she did this true to real life when it came to bird behavior, what they eat, where they prefer to spend their time, what nest type they’re known for, and other quirks. Elizabeth Hargrave, the Maryland-based creator of Wingspan, pulled from sources like Audubon field guides and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird database as she molded the game’s mechanics and the way it is scored. ![]() The game is also committed to scientific integrity in a way that resonates with my work as the editor of Down to Earth, Vox’s biodiversity reporting project. “I really like the tactile aspects,” Cara Giaimo, a science writer who has been playing Wingspan on and off since the beginning of the pandemic, told me. There is an almost ASMR-like quality to the eggs, food tabs, miniature dice-rolling birdhouse (assembly required), and other avian flourishes that compose the inner workings of Wingspan. Physically, the game is beautiful, featuring field guide-caliber illustrations by artists Natalia Rojas and Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo. There’s even a solo mode, almost like solitaire, as well as an online version. In Wingspan, up to five players can be building their preserves at once, but two-player works just as well. As the game progresses, “the combination of birds you play becomes more and more efficient at generating points each turn, like an engine running faster and faster,” as Dan Kois wrote in Slate. “You are also effectively building a biodiversity engine.” Wingspan is, after all, what’s known among serious gamers as an “engine building” game. “You’re not just attracting birds to get points,” reads a 2019 review of the game in Nature. (The classic edition is all North American birds, though game expansion packs branch out to other continents.)Ĭertain birds have powers - gain a food token when activated, for example - and if you’re smart about how you distribute them throughout your ecosystem, you quickly build up something bigger than any one bird. ![]() The idea is to attract birds to your preserve, which you do by making moves using certain combinations of food tokens, candy-size pastel eggs, and opportunities to draw fresh birds into your hand from the game’s 170-card deck. The rules of play work like this: You’re basically the steward of an ecosystem that comprises forest, grassland, and wetland habitats. We’d been hearing about it from birding-adjacent friends for a minute and decided, during the recent peak of the omicron wave, to drop the $60 for the indie breakout from Missouri-based Stonemaier Games. I’d rather listen to a record.īut I’ve found myself delighted by Wingspan, the hit board game that has turned a multimillion-dollar industry on its head since its release in 2019. Headier “hobby” titles like Settlers of Catan, or even a mass-audience legacy game like Monopoly, require levels of time and commitment that I find overwhelming, and I’ve seen how they can feed stressed-out competitive tendencies and otherwise kill a vibe. If the gameplay is even remotely involved, I’ll quickly lose interest. “Okay, weirdo,” she said, grabbing a pencil and scorecard. Proudly, I drew the owl and set it on its spot on the board. “I will play my great horned owl, and I’ll pay for it with my army of rats,” I announced. There I was - down to my last turn, sitting on a cache of rodents, and holding the pair of eggs needed to activate a bird of prey that I’d been hoping to slot into my forest habitat.
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