The Winner of the EGU Game Jam

The EGU Game Jam was run as a collaboration between the Manchester Game Studies Network and the European Geosciences Union, in which we invited game designers to come up with analogue games that fit on just 4 sheets of A4 paper, and which had a theme that related to the geosciences, or an aspect of geoscientific research.

We had some brilliant submissions, all of which were judged by our panel of judges in terms of science communication (how well it communicates a geoscientific topic), gameplay (how enjoyable it is to play), accessibility (how accessible it is to all audiences), and design (how it looks). 

The winner of the EGU Game Jam was judged to be Fishery Boom, a roll and write for 2-4 players about fishery management. The judges praised Fishery Boom, for being a really engaging game that was well-designed and which was great at generating dialogue around the topic of over-fishing and the negative impact that this is having on our oceans. We thought it would be make an excellent game to play alongside Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle’s Fleet: The Dice Game (Eagle-Gryphon Games: 2018) for an afternoon exploring the different aspects of the fishing industry.

Congratulations to Fishery Boom, and all of the other entries, and we encourage you to check out the games for yourself. Print them. Play them. See what conversations they begin…