From Play to Planning: Récré'Action, a Serious Game for Climate-Resilient Schoolyards

Developed in the framework of the LIFE ARTISAN project led by the French Biodiversity Agency, the serious game called “Récré'Action” is now available to play. Created as a complement to the Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) module developed by ENPC (freely available here: https://zenodo.org/records/12188484), this board game engages Master’s students—while remaining adaptable to other audiences—in a collective redesign of an elementary school playground to make it more inclusive, sustainable, and climate-resilient.

Participants assume the roles of various stakeholders (child, parent, teacher, technical services, architect, municipality…) working together to choose new designs and surface materials for the playground. Their objective is to meet shared resilience goals—such as improving rainwater infiltration, reducing the urban heat island (UHI) effect, and enhancing biodiversity—while staying within a limited budget and responding to unexpected events.

Through gameplay, the exercise illustrates the complexity of decision-making processes, stakeholder interactions, and the trade-offs required between environmental, social, technical, and regulatory considerations in greening projects. The current version exists only in French for now, but it is intended to be translated into English.