Ice and the Sky

About this board game

Ice and the Sky is a cooperative game for 2–4 players that plays in about 20 minutes. Inspired by Claude Lorius’s book Voyage dans l’Anthropocène, it challenges players to work together while balancing the planet’s interconnected systems.

Players place cards into a shared arrangement representing the atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere, with the biosphere at the intersection of all three. Air is positioned at the top, Earth in the middle, and Water at the bottom, creating a layered setting where every placement can affect the group’s progress.

Turns proceed clockwise. On a turn, a player places one of their cards wherever they choose, following the layout’s element levels. Empty spaces on an element’s line must be filled before cards can be placed over cards already there. Once played, a card cannot be moved, although it may be covered by another card.

• Cooperative play for 2–4 players
• Approximately 20 minutes per game
• Card placement across Air, Earth, and Water
• Shared tension with no single player leading the group

The game offers only limited information. When a card placement completes or destroys a player’s goal, that goal is revealed, making each decision a tense test of cooperation and balance.

After the 12 cards of the first generation have been played, players reveal their Objective cards and score. The resolution examines visible CO2 cards in the ice, returns ice cards accordingly, and evaluates the sky level through the objectives. A second sky card with the same value is then used to observe the evolution of CO2 in the sky. In Ice and the Sky, every card contributes to an escalating shared puzzle.