A raft of nautical games & Daybreak!
Plus, the composers of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Tales of Kenzera: ZAU
Daybreak’s about saving the world from climate change, and it may be the most NPR board game ever.
I joked while playing it with my hapless friends and family that it was basically a gamified version of Kim Stanley Robinson’s textbook of a novel, The Ministry for the Future. It’s so nerdy and progressive that it includes QR codes on every card that take you to pages filled with environmental policies and perfunctory calls to activism. In an earlier draft of my article accompanying the Here & Now feature, I even belabored an extended “crunchy salad” metaphor before better sense prevailed.
But what can I say — Daybreak’s green through and through; tossed up with ideas that range from the fresh to the dubious, sprinkled over with enough mechanical crunch to keep hardcore gamers chewing. Even as its lefty earnestness rolled my eyes, I enjoyed its card-play, admired its ambition, and took hope in its premise:
“What we're trying to do is help people understand that this is a very complex problem that can only be solved if we work together,” says co-designer Matteo Menapace. “Instead of trying to overcome each other, we are working together to solve something quite complex and quite urgent.” […]
The game’s designers also wanted to walk the environmentalist talk in the game’s production. “Daybreak” doesn’t ship in shrinkwrap or contain any plastic pieces — it’s made of biodegradable materials like cardboard and wood. Leacock and Menapace even changed core designs to be more sustainable. After a consultant told them a cloth bag “would add quite a bit carbon footprint,” says Menapace, “we had to redesign that part of the game and instead replace that cloth bag and all the bits inside that cloth bag with dice.”
Wonky as “Daybreak” might be, Leacock doesn’t want it to feel like trying to get a kid to eat their spinach: “That's sort of like taking broccoli, dipping it in chocolate and saying, ‘Hey, this is great’ Instead, it's more like, ‘Hey, there's this great game and it's an excuse to talk about the climate crisis and internalize what the problem is.’ By playing it, you really see that it's going to be a very multifaceted, sort of all hands on deck kind of thing.”
I appeared on Here & Now Anytime this week, where I collected some of April’s most interesting releases under a (vaguely) nautical banner. While I discussed Endless Ocean Luminous, Harold Halibut and Stellar Blade — Another Crab’s Treasure stole the show. I’ve been shouting about it since it came out last week — it’s my favorite Soulsike since Lies of P (which I finished since I wrote my 2023 Best of List, by the way — it would have made the top 10).
Also, Here & Now aired our conversation with Nainita Desai, the composer of indie Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: ZAU. While I was mixed on the overall game, the soundtrack is one of the best I’ve heard.
Finally, All Things Considered aired Vinny Acovino’s wonderful piece on the music of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth — which is well worth your time.
Other Here & Now Mastromarino Productions
Republicans in Congress propose excluding noncitizens from census apportionment counts
Counter-protesters attack pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA overnight
Finally, one last watery recommendation for you — Ashley Montgomery’s peerless piece on Spongebob turning 25!