Cards
There are three types of card: Six player characters, five research objectives, and 52 assets. The first two are printed on sealed 7x12cm cards, the last on 7x4cm. However, when printing on regular A4 paper this is very un-economical, so for self-printing the larger cards were shrunk to 5×8.5 cm, and come with hints to align the front and back (namely, make two matching pinholes on front and back, then use two pins to align while glueing).
- UK edition characters and objectives
- UK edition assets
- Global edition characters and objectives
- Global edition assets
Pieces
The six player pieces are made from 30mm diameter wooden disks with the character’s logo printed on, and topped with clear resin. If you prefer you can have just the logos without the title; the A4-sheet allows you to print multiple sets at once, or try your hand at cutting neat disks. Ideally you use a large punch to cut the circular tokens.
- UK edition tokens (6″x4″ / 15x10cm photo paper size)
- UK edition tokens without names
- Multiple UK edition tokens (A4 paper size)
- Global edition tokens (6″x4″ / 15x10cm photo paper size)
- Global edition tokens without names
- Multiple Global edition tokens (A4 paper size)
Cash
The money is printed on cheap, coloured paper. Typically you find blue, pink, green and yellow easily: Ideally you use these to print the 2K, 5K, 10K and 20K notes respectively, because these are the colours used on the reverse of the character cards to help you set up the game more quickly [for example: Exebridge’s starts with 120K which is practically split into 4 green (20K), 4 pink (5K), and 10 blue (2K) notes].
Board
The two versions are practically the same, one is on A2 size (=594x420mm) with the ‘bleed’ overhanging the page, the other is on a 600x426mm artboard so the bleed is within the page.
Extra
As the values of some assets can change during the game, it can be handy to print off the asset tracker (half A4 size).
Credits
Copyright: Sabina Leonelli, CC-BY-NC
Contributors:
- Michel Durinx: graphics, design, development, production
- Leonardo Durinx: development, illustrations
- PHIL_OS team and affiliates (Rose Trappes, Hugh Williamson, Fotis Tsiroukis, Joyce Koranteng-Acquah, Emma Cavazzoni, Paola Castaño, Yoshinari Yoshiba, Mariana Vitti Rodriguez): development, pilot runs
- Sabina Leonelli: original idea, design, development, pilot runs, funding acquisition
This game was produced between 2023 and 2024 via generous funding by the European Research Council, award number 101001145 (“A Philosophy of Open Science for Diverse Research Environments”, PHIL_OS); and wonderful afternoon and evenings of teamwork by the PHIL_OS group at Egenis, the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences at the University of Exeter. Our gratitude goes to our colleagues there for their feedback and willingness to play along; and to all the players who engaged with us as we moved from prototype to finished game, including the PHIL_OS advisory board who gave us fantastic feedback in March 2023.