Earth Rising is a boardgame with a message - a message that not only runs through the entire game, but also everything about it.
That message is one of eco-consciousness, and not only does every turn, action and move keep bringing that message home but the fact that the game comes with no* plastic at all (even the components bags are made from recycled paper) shows that Stop, Drop and Roll are not making a game, but aligning with their own message as well.
There's also a lot going on - given how pretty much everything is in play from the start and your goal is to create an end state where there is harmony across the different parts of the board, it means that when you start out... there's a lot in play.
Colour Everywhere
Earth Rising is a colourful game - the component board itself is split into various colours to represent the various industries that can make or break the planet, and everything is tied around those colours, from the character cards to the tokens you place.
It was important to me that these colours we bright, bold and nothing pulls in the player than having images that pop.
I wanted to make sure that not only would these colours pop, but that the way in which these colours inter-played across the entire game was front and centre, so having them sat on rich wooden table really helped sell the warmth I was going for.
You can really see this in one of the before/after shoots that helped that colour really shine - adding a slight hint of yellow in the highlights really warms it up.
Your Characters Are Key
The characters you play with in Earth Rising really change up how your game plays and as I mainly played this solo so I got to cycle through all the roles available and could see how much of an impact each one had.
(The solo variant is really nice, you have "elections" every 5 turns which can drastically change the characters you have available to you - very much like a regular democracy these days!)
I wanted to make sure these characters were front and centre - and tied back to the colour scheme that runs throughout the game. I decided to keep these simple, as I wanted players to be able to easily see the difference between each character, and the industry ties that come with them.
I think this might be one of the few (only?) games where "Tech Bro" is a hero?
* My version did come shrink wrapped, so there is some plastic involved though I genuinely don't know how you solve that problem
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