GalapaGo! Explore, Create, Conserve
Go on a journey to the Galápagos Islands, a volcanic archipelago known for its diversity of animal and plant life. As you play this board game with friends and family, you’ll discover that the Galápagos is a much more complex system than you ever imagined. Human impact and natural events cause a variety of crises, and you must work collaboratively with your fellow travelers to solve conservation problems as new crises arise. It’s time to pack your bags and GalapaGo!
4 Players, 1 Hour Playing Time, Age: 12+
Project Overview
I was selected to travel to the Galápagos with Stanford professors, alumni, and students for an immersive course: “Evolution, Conservation, and Education in the Galápagos.” While snorkeling with sharks and penguins, I also learned about complex social-ecological systems. Diving deeper, I applied for the Stanford Chappell Lougee Scholarship to work on a 10 week design project. I created GalapaGo!, a board game that brings the magic of the Galápagos to players’ kitchen tables.
Processes/Tools
Rapid Prototyping, User Testing, Data Synthesis, Illustrator, Photoshop, Procreate
My Role
GalapaGo! is an independent design project that I created for the Stanford Chappell Lougee Scholarship. I received guidance from my faculty mentors. Kathy Davies, the Managing Director of the Stanford Life Design Lab, provided valuable mentorship for the game design process. Nicole Ardoin, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, was a great resource about social ecological systems in the Galápagos.
Design Goals
Prototypes and Key Observations
I created 10 prototypes of my game. With each prototype, I conducted user tests (in person, over Zoom, video recording) to observe gameplay in action, gather insights, and move forward. Test participants included family, friends, neighbors, Stanford students, and professors.
Conservation Solutions Cards
Insights:
Nobody wanted to work together to buy common resources or trade
Players weaponized the El Niño punishment card to hurt others, gaining personal rewards for harming the environment.
The educational focus was more about stakeholder relationships than the Galápagos itself.
Post Test: How can I encourage collaboration and bring the focus back to the Galápagos Islands?
Resource Excavation
Insights:
The Galápagos map game board centered the game focus on the islands
A player mentioned “If everyone loses, you don’t feel like you really lost.” With this mindset, an option for everyone to lose incentivizes selfish behavior.
Resource focus took away from the plants and animals of the Galápagos
Post test: What would a purely collaborative game look like?
Purely Collaborative: Invasive Species Removal
Players collaborated to remove the invasive species while learning about the roles that different stakeholders play.
More conversation between players compared to previous games.
Without competition, players were overall less engaged in the game and had less interest in winning: “If everyone loses, the test will be over!”
Post Test: How can I incorporate the intensity and energy of competition into my game?
Hidden Objectives: Semi Cooperative
Players must collect animal cards while making secret decisions that impact the entire group.
A player announced that he would always help himself, so everyone should behave accordingly
Although selfish behavior realistically gives greater personal reward, it goes against my learning goals to penalize collaboration
Post test: How can I incentivize collaboration in a competitive game? How can I find a more diverse group of game testers during COVID19?
Building and Conserving
Using dice rolling for movement caused players to spend unnecessary time in transit between spots on the board.
Players could strategize individually while also collaborating to solve crisis cards.
Drawing crisis cards each round dominated gameplay, so there was little time to strategize
Post-test: How can players move around the board in a more efficient way? How can I facilitate interaction and exchange between players? How can I make crisis cards appear more randomly?
Introducing Currency and Random Crises
Players purposely ignored a crisis that required multiple people to solve because it was only harming one specific player.
Players spread out to different islands and worked separately with little interaction
Players felt like they were either helping or hurting the environment and wanted a middle ground
Post test: How can I encourage players to interact with one another? How can I incorporate the complex relationships between stakeholders?
Introducing Ferry Routes
Ferry Routes connect islands, encourage interaction, and move around without dice
Crisis cards were too random
Conservation cards were not impactful enough, so educational goals weren’t achieved
Players wanted to use other player’s ferry routes, and they wanted more ways to make money
Post test: How can I incorporate negotiation into the ferry routes? How can I emphasize the conservation cards? How can I give players more opportunities to make money?
Introducing Graphics
Would players be more likely to do a conservation action when they see a picture of that animal?
No visible reaction to the graphics — could be because the test was over Zoom
Players had too many options of possible actions on their turn
Post test: Are all of the player’s possible actions purposeful and essential to gameplay? How can I simplify and clarify my game to improve flow?
Print and Play
Having less choices to make on a turn made the game flow faster
One player didn’t build any hotels/fishing boats and solely completed conservation actions. This backfired because he could not make money — against my educational goals?
Post Test: How can I center the game around conservation?
First Printed Prototype: Conservation Card Focus
To win, you must solve 5 conservation cards
Greater emphasis on conservation — aligns with learning objectives
Players would purposely not cooperate to resolve a crisis if it only harmed a single player
Post test: Is there a way I can ensure everyone works together to solve the crises? Is this possible with a competitive game?
Purely Collaborative: Crisis vs Conservation Cards
In order to stay true to my design goals, I made the game fully collaborative. Players must cumulatively solve 10 conservation cards before drawing 10 crisis cards.
Increased collaboration, with role cards providing individuality
Overall much closer to my design goals
Post test: How can I balance the amount of crisis cards and conservation cards to keep the game at an engaging difficulty?
Print and Play Part 2
Once I printed out all of the materials, I could drop off the full game at playtesters’ houses for testing
Players pointed out confusing cards and where to clarify the rules
Players measured the difficulty of the game.
Post tests: I used what I learned to update the cards, rules, and game board, and I am very satisfied with my final product!
Card Design Process
Original design concepts
After reflecting on my educational goals, I decided that using photos would more effectively teach players about different plants and animals. To incorporate elements of whimsy, I tried collaging and incorporating bright colors.
Conservation and Crisis Cards
For conservation cards, I used photos I took in the Galápagos and collaged them with earthy fabrics, bright colors, and interesting textures. For my crisis cards, I used a dark grey background to express the severity and urgency of a crisis.
Game Board Process
I went through many different game board ideas, updating the board as I refined gameplay.
