Daybreak Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Daybreak, a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock. In Daybreak, players have to work together to save the planet from climate change.

The first “environmental” game this reviewer recalls seeing is Vital Lacerda’s CO2 (2012). While admirable in its laser focus on semi-cooperation and the combination of planning, production and conversion of polluting power infrastructure, it sits proudly at the microeconomic level, engaging players not as specific countries or activists, but as CEOs of energy companies.

Now we come to a much-anticipated title from veteran designer Matt Leacock and newcomer Matteo Menapace. Daybreak is a cooperative game with players acting as world governments who have collectively decided to solve the climate crisis from all angles. Over a series of rounds, players will create projects collectively and individually, attempt to side-step crises, and reach the critical goal of carbon drawdown, where more carbon is being removed from the atmosphere than created. It’s a cooperative game for up to 4 players and takes about 1-2 hours to play. For a best first experience, this reviewer recommends playing with 2 players.

A game of Daybreak proceeds over 6 rounds. In each round, players will take on the following stages:

Global Stage – During this step, players will collectively choose a Global Project card which acts like a bonus ability that any player can use.

Local Stage – This is the heart of player decision-making in the game. Each player begins play with 5 Local Projects and then receives up to 5 cards every round. All players make interactive simultaneous choices about which cards to play (either as new projects or enhancing others), which to use as “currency”, and which they might