Save the Lake

The goal of this cooperative board game is to achieve intelligent and sustainable land use in the Lake Balaton region.

Players take on various roles and work as a community to achieve this goal. The roles in the game include: investor, designer, architect, factory owner, researcher, politician, producer, and ecologist. The latter is actually a roaming role, with its role card moving to a different player each turn, allowing everyone to experience working with an ecological advisor. The roles' properties translate real-life analogies into the language of the board game, giving everyone some form of advantage over the basic rules.

The gameplay is straightforward. Each player has 5 action points to spend freely during their turn. There are expectations in the turns (what needs to be built, what needs to be developed, how much tax needs to be paid), but at the end of the turns, the ecosystem's state must always be checked.

Essentially, players are fighting against the game and the challenges it presents, and at the end of the rules, there is a scale to measure their performance from an ecological perspective.

The weakest performance: "Unfortunately, development was faster than what the ecosystem could bear in the area. The lake's water became polluted, wildlife was minimized, and the area could no longer meet your needs. Lake Balaton, as a habitat, cultural, and entertainment venue, ceased to exist. Maybe life will return someday."

The best performance: "Congratulations! Great teamwork and excellent situational awareness characterize you! The ecosystem is flourishing, species thought to be extinct are emerging, and you have also pushed back desertification! The area amply provides for its inhabitants, and thanks to you, all industries in the area are also operating profitably! Continue to treat our world this way!"

The strongest aspect of the game is its thematic depth, a feat that owes much to the ecological and professional support the development team received. The gameplay and the extended playtime allow players to immerse themselves comfortably and calmly in the topic, pondering its questions before making decisions in the game.

The images also show that the game's execution turned out quite unique, which is unsurprising given that an art university is the publisher. It's delightful that a university project can indeed become a product and, even more so, that it smartly and enjoyably engages with an important subject.