Narrative Essay about Creating a Board Game

I based my board game off of the Game of Life. I used the orange and blue cards as information cards, which you land on as you play the game. These cards give you information about the animal you play as, and you have to remember this information. I added quiz cards which replaced milestone spaces. In the original game, there were spaces in which you had to automatically stop at which represented a new change in the life you’re playing as. The outcome of these spaces were based on the life you created beforehand after landing on spaces. I tried to replicate this by having orange and blue cards represent the information, and as you remember the information, you get quizzed on it, and it counts as a milestone.  I originally thought of doing this for the project because it reminded me of the circle of life of animals. This was my first idea to use for the project, but I also considered other games as well.. I thought this would be a sufficient game to use for the project because it included a lot of cards and information spaces which creates opportunities to include more data about invasive species in the game. I also thought of using Guess Who as the board game, but this game, in my opinion, would not be able to use as much information about invasive species given in the criteria as I liked. 

I included data into my cards by including the education criteria. All categories, like biology, impact, control, prevention, policy, and identification were included into the information cards. The information cards ranged from short answers to long answers. Orange represented short answer cards, and these cards usually had fast, bullet-point facts. Blue represented long answer cards, and these cards had longer, paragraph-style information, sometimes with statistics. I provided biology of invasive species by including information on their anatomy and adaptations of their current environment. I also included facts about the animal’s reproduction, which is technically related to biology, but it can also affect the impact of that ecosystem. Impact of the ecosystem was added by incorporating statistics and numbers of its damage. I included control of the invasive species by finding information from the country it has invaded the most (finding it from its official website or articles about it), and finding out their control methods. This goes hand in hand with prevention, but I separated from overall prevention and control over time. Same goes with policy, but I didn’t always use the information from official websites. Common knowledge from locals in the area shared policies about the animal, like for example, it may be illegal to shoot an animal in a certain state/territory. Identification of the animal was added as I wrote descriptions of the animal, involving its physical features. In addition, I added ways you can find the animal, for example it may have a certain type of burrow, which is a way of identifying it. Of course I made a rulebook and instruction manual as well. 

During this project, I had to do a lot of research. This research led me to find new things about invasive species I didn’t know before. One thing I found was the different methods people use to get rid of invasive species. There are simple home remedies to get rid of them in your yard, but I also found how bigger corporations handle the prevention of invasive species. They monitor imported and exported products, to prevent it in the early stage. Companies also use rapid response, which is a set of actions that eradicate possible invasive species and its habitat. They also replace this species with the native species. These are not the usual ways of elimination of invasive species, so that was very interesting to learn. Another thing I learned was that invasiveness can evolve and is present from birth. New species that are introduced to their new habitat are not all invasive. Invasiveness can appear when an organism is released from its natural predators. Charles Darwin's observation that species from a non-nativegorup are more likely to be successful invaders. This corroborates how invaders can be invasive since birth. While researching the different education components of the paper, I learned a lot about the invasive species in general. I didn’t know the European rabbit was an invasive species before this project! I gained a better understanding of how invasive species really function, and damage (or positive things) they do. I included adaptations in.