Do you like games? Do you like the Earth? Then you will love QUARTETnary!
QUARTETnary is a card game about the geological time scale, developed by long-term EGU members Iris van Zelst and Lucia Perez-Diaz and partly funded through the EGU Public Engagement Grant 2021. The game is finally ready to be manufactured, but in order for that to happen, we need you! So back the Kickstarter to secure your very own copy of QUARTETnary!
Through playing QUARTETnary, you will discover the formation of mountain ranges, the evolution of animals and plants, the changing face of the Earth through the ages and more, all captured within 60 beautifully illustrated cards.
Playable by anyone aged 8 or over, QUARTETnary is suitable for groups of 2 to 5 players and can also be enjoyed solo thanks to its domino-mode. Gameplay follows that of the classic card game Quartets (similar to Go Fish and Happy Families), where players aim to collect sets of four cards belonging to a specific group; in this case, a geological time unit.
The time units in QUARTETnary are the 3 oldest geological eons (the Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic) and the 12 geological time periods from the youngest eon (the Phanerozoic). This spans the entire history of the Earth: from the formation of the Earth 4.567 billion years ago to the appearance of modern humans.
Make the most complete timeline of the history of the Earth and win!
After working on QUARTETnary for many years (Iris initially conceived the idea in 2018), we are now ready to actually produce it! Back the Kickstarter now to secure your own copy of QUARTETnary and treat yourself to some other fabulous rewards, including a digital colouring book with QUARTETnary art and cute poems about the history of the Earth and the chance to become part of QUARTETnary history forever: for select rewards, we will add your name to the physical game booklet of QUARTETnary!
In April 2024, at the EGU General Assembly, we will present QUARTETnary at the Games for Geoscience session. We will even bring prototypes, so you can get your first taste of playing QUARTETnary at the EGU Game Night!
But flimsy mock-ups are nothing compared to the actual, professionally printed version we are itching to commission from our printer. So… want to get your hands on an actual copy? You can if you are able to back QUARTETnary on Kickstarter!
We will also present the educational benefits of QUARTETnary at EGU24, because of course we came up with a method to test the educational effectiveness of our game. Preliminary data suggests that players’ knowledge of the history of the Earth and the geological time scale significantly improve through playing QUARTETnary.
Indeed QUARTETnary is designed to be educational: the colours of the cards are in accordance with the official colour scheme set by the International Commission on Stratigraphy to ensure easy comparison with the official geological time scale and geological maps.
In addition, each card contains a handy little time scale, so you can keep track of when the different events in the history of the Earth took place. And of course it’s lots of fun to play QUARTETnary 😉
So please help us to make QUARTETnary a reality!