Wingspan is your next local board game obsession
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My weekend nights are best spent at home, clustered around a coffee table with friends, playing board games. We’re not reaching for Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride, but one with a D.C. connection: Wingspan.
Why it matters: Wingspan was created by a local and tested by the DMV gaming community. It's visually stunning, and fun — a strategic game for new and experienced gamers that's sold 1.7 million copies and won numerous awards.
Zoom in: Silver Spring resident Elizabeth Hargrave is the mind behind the 2019 game. She moved to D.C. in the late 1990s to work in health policy and later began immersing herself in local board game culture.
- The idea for Wingspan came about when she couldn't find a game that meshed with her interests.
- As she put it to me: “Why are all of these games about castles and trains and space travel? What if there was a game for birds instead?”
- Her birding trips to Lake Artemesia in College Park provided inspiration.
📌 How the game works: Players place bird cards into different habitats, lay eggs, draw food tokens, and attempt to complete bird-related challenges in order to win the most points.
- The cards feature ornate, realistic illustrations, and share brief facts about each bird.
Between the lines: Play-testing — essentially like beta-testing — is a key part of game design.
- To get feedback on Wingspan, Hargrave went to UnPub, a gaming festival in Maryland's Hunt Valley, as well as to local meetups for playtesters called Break My Game.
The big picture: Wingspan's popularity soared (pun intended!) shortly after its release, and the game has since expanded to include birds from Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
- There's a regular Wingspan Wednesday gaming night at Labyrinth, the Eastern Market board game shop.
🦊 What I'm watching: Hargrave — now a full-time game designer — has worked on other games, including one based on flowers and an upcoming one about foxes. She’s also working on a new expansion of Wingspan.
What they’re saying: “The pandemic was hard because so much of [game design] is based around play-testing," Hargrave says. "But playtesting is back and it's fun to be back at it.”
💭 Chelsea’s thought bubble: At my game nights, we have a rule that you have to read aloud a fun fact whenever you play a bird.
- My favorite? The Little Penguin.