A party game about the human microbiome designed by Melanie Bossert, Roula Gholmieh, and Jane McDonald with expert advice from microbiologist David Kong (MIT). I played the role of instructor and producer, and provided some game design inspiration through my party game Chainmakers.
Played where there are many microbiomes.
Microculture debuted at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2015, and was played over the course of a week by over two hundred visitors to the Media Lab Lounge. Microculture was also the featured game of the Museum of Natural History’s monthly Sci Cafe in 2017.
Join a flora…
The game unfolds as a massively-multiplayer-collectable-card-icebreaker game: Participants are recruited by other players into a Microculture team – such as the skin flora, or gut flora, and are given the task of recruiting other players into their Microculture by following prompts on the cards (see below). When the time is up, the biggest Microculture team wins.