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My friends and I had a great night playing Raccoon Rampage. It is fun, challenging and on top of it all, it looks amazing!

--Anouk Tuijnman

Perfect for 3-4 players in classrooms or on family game nights, BioInvaders! Raccoon Rampage is ideal for fostering negotiation skills while learning about how to tackle real-world ecological challenges.

Rarely is a topic implemented so well in the mechanics of a game, plus the topic itself is mega interesting and the game graphically very strong

--Anika Thiel

the game


Raccoons have invaded Europe (🦝) and they’re destroying so much stuff! In this fast paced, semi-cooperative game you will work together with other players to stop raccoons from messing up our houses, eating our local wildlife, and causing mischief. At the same time you’ll try to make sure YOU come out on top.

image of Raccoon Rampage on a table

BioInvaders! Raccoon Rampage features a mix of strategic planning and social negotiation. Playing as 1 of 4 unique roles, from Hunter to Animal Rights Activist, you pick policies to put into a queue, vote on policies in the queue, and dabble in chaos using action cards that manipulate things in your favour.

What’s unique about the experience is that yes you have to work together - BUT you also want to beat everyone else!

Like in Pandemic, you’ll work with other players to stop the spread of a (raccoon) invasion. But unlike Pandemic you individually want to win. This means a lot of backstabbing which can lead to everyone failing, but if you play too nice… you’re not going to win!

Key features:

  • ages 12+
  • 3 or 4 player
  • 45 - 60 mins
  • over 160 beautiful cards with unique artwork
  • four storylines (that can be mashed up) based on research into plausible European futures
  • a large game board
  • four unique player roles, each with their own objective, unique deck and player mat

image of Raccoon Rampage back of box

Four player decks made of policy and action cards

Each unique deck is a mix of policy and action cards. On your turn, put a policy card into a queue that you and the other players can vote on. If a card gets enough votes, we move towards victory as a group but of course, each player wants their policies to win so they might not vote for you.

image of policy cards Each deck has a mix of standard and unique policy cards (black border).

Action cards let you mess with other players. Whether it’s stealing votes, swapping policies or manipulating the results of a vote, strategic decisions on when to play these powerful cards is crucial for success.

image of action cards Each deck also has a mix of standard and unique action cards (white border).

Four storylines that can be mashed up for variations

image of story cards Every round a new story card is flipped. These story cards put pressure on players to work together and put their personal goals in conflict with the group mission. Every vote counts - do we act on the story event for immediate benefit? Or do we instead invest in longer term goals?

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Play on Tabletopia

You can play our game on Tabletopia or print and play it at home. Either way, it’s completely free.

Playing the game on Tabletopia should work on most computers and in most web browsers. We find it works best in Chrome. It’s hard to play with a trackpad so try to find a mouse if you can.

The online version doesn’t automatically implement the rules of the game, so you’ll need to learn and run the game yourself.

You can download the rulebook here and watch a video explanation below.

If you have any feedback or questions about the rules we’d love to hear that feedback.

 games@paidia.fun

If you would like to print and play the game at home, you can!

You’ll need to find some cubes and dice and some stickers to customise one die.

You can download PDFs of all of the game materials here

media library

Origins

BioInvaders! Raccoon Rampage is one of two games developed within the EU-funded research projects InvasiBES and AlienScenarios. These projects explored potential futures in Europe and how they might affect our ability to manage invasive alien species, as well as their impacts on native biodiversity.

Aimed at the general public, the content of BioInvaders! Raccoon Rampage is based on outcomes from another game we developed in parallel, European BioInvasions RPG (find out more about that game here). BioInvaders! Raccoon Rampage simplifies the complex socio-ecological dynamics of biological invasions while maintaining scientific accuracy in key areas. In the game, players adopt roles as environmental agencies, hunters, or animal rights lobbyists. Players each have their own agenda and compete, but if they don’t compromise, they will fail to prevent raccoons from causing ecological damage across Europe, and everyone loses.

Partners

Description

Paidia is:

 Col Anderson (Lead Design)

 David Farrell (Game Director)

 Kris Tsenova (Art)

This game was a collaboration between Paidia and an amazing group of Scientist Contributors including:

 Wolf-Christian Saul, Freie Universität Berlin & Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany

 Sophia Kimmig, Freie Universität Berlin & Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany

 Guillaume Latombe, University of Edinburgh, UK

 Bernd Lenzner, University of Vienna, Austria

 Cristian Perez-Granados, Universidad de Alicante, Spain

 Nuria Roura-Pascual, Universitat de Girona, Catalonia, Spain

 Leandra Heinrich, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

 Jonathan Jeschke, Freie Universität Berlin & Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany