Adventerra’s Polar Adventure: Disappearing Ice takes preschoolers’ polar animals on a trail across mini-icebergs, avoiding setbacks that cause climate change and endanger their lives, helping them land safely on a big glacier. We took our seal, polar bear, bunny and penguin and lined them up to start the game. Take turns rolling the wooden die, moving your animal forward based on the image rolled. A tree represents improving air quality that prevents glaciers from melting (move one space forward) versus a ship which represents more ships moving through due to icebergs melting and providing paths. Here’s where the fun and strategy starts. Place a ship one space in front of an opponent and don’t move your animal forward. Kids learn the ramifications of negative behaviors on our environment and how they endanger the lives of polar animals, thus are hindered from moving their animal forward. Other illustrations on the die include a block of ice representing ice melting and breaking off, and a car and a factory representing pollution that causes the ice to melt.

The game subtly reinforces the major truths of global warming and climate management: changes while understandable are gradual in nature, there are no quick fixes, while harm occurs slow but sure if not addressed. The costs of would-be economic progress are assessed consistently to the carbon harm of cars and factories, with our game hero being the tree whose chemistry feeds on the evil carbon, processing out the evil and keeps the ice from melting. There’s a lot of fun trying to get our fluffy furry friends to safety and you can’t help but be imprinted with the forces at work that earthlings need to pay attention to.

Available at Adventerra Games