"I have a plan to start”: Empowering Awareness and Behavior Change through a Collaborative Flood Resilience Game

Games empowering active engagement in real-world climate adaptation measures are underexplored. Yet, bottom-up engagement is crucial for addressing natural hazard impacts at the community and individual levels. Our work employed an iterative research for and through co-design approach to develop a locally adapted tabletop game for a community-led educational Center. We tested the game onsite (n = 254), followed by two surveys, one immediately after playing (n = 57) and one conducted two weeks later (n = 11), assessing players’ awareness, and sense of empowerment and agency. Results show an increase in participants’ awareness of local countermeasures, a sense of agency, and their participatory efficacy in contributing to their own, their family’s, and their community’s climate resilience. Our work contributes a transferable game concept that reflects complex real-world interdependencies, empowering a sense of agency through practice-based game mechanics.