Rising Waters

Description

Game Design and Development: Scout Blum

Artists: Lamaro Smith, Makiyah Alexander

Listen to designer Scout Blum’s interview on the Beyond Solitaire podcast about RISING WATERS!

For more information about the game, see the Kickstarter campaign page.

To try the game for free, head over to Tabletopia.

Check out the Rising Waters Resource Page for a Digital Rulebook/How To Play Video.

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It’s Spring, 1927. While Americans dance the Charleston and drink bootlegged liquor, the Mississippi Delta faces a flood of epic proportions. If battered river levees collapse, everything important to you will be washed away.

RISING WATERS is a cooperative board game built around area control, set collection, and variable player power mechanics where players experience life through the lens of African American plight. In the game, you will confront two forces – racism from white landowners and the power of nature. Persevere by drawing on your community’s courage and strength from your family, church, music, farming, and education.  Can you manage the rising waters to stay alive?

RISING WATERS is a 2-4 player game of the strength of community, methods of resistance, and the struggle against nature suitable for both classroom use and casual play from Central Michigan University Press.

2-4 Players      60-90 Minutes      Ages 14 & Up

Educational goals

RISING WATERS helps educators expand the perspective of the 1920s. The game centers African Americans to help players understand and empathize with their plight during the 1920s environmental disaster. Racism appears in the game through the appearance of Landowner cards like “threats,” “force,” and “race hatred.” Since landowners also controlled the labor in the area, the cards include “job offers,” which players can use to build or raise levees to protect from floodwaters. As another source of protection, relief camps helped African Americans gain access to relief supplies but were also some of the most racist spaces during the crisis.

Yet African Americans weren’t solely victims in the 1927 flood–as always, they maintained a sense of agency and sources of power to survive. In the game, this comes from the Community cards, which include blues, farm animals, church, garden, family, and education cards. The cards help players upgrade their abilities during the game as well as resist racism. RISING WATERS serves as a powerful illustration of the difficulty of African American lives in the Jim Crow South. Through the game, students and teachers will be able to have challenging conversations about the endemic nature of racism and how it complicates life during a crisis.