Abyssal Abundance

A Beyond the Shore Cooperative Boardgame

Game Overview

This is a cooperative multiplayer game, where players work together to fight deep sea mining. Deep sea mining is the extraction of minerals from the seabed of the deep sea, such as polymetallic nodules which contain key minerals for digital infrastructure and batteries for the so-called green energy transition. Scientists and activists are strongly against deep sea mining because the deep sea is filled with unknowns and the ensuing environmental impact may be deadly and irreversible for our global ecosystem that strongly depends on our oceans. 

Players are encouraged to collaborate with other human players and non-human companions to stand against the extractivist machines ready to wreak havoc in the Pacific Ocean and beyond. The game mood is hopeful and playful, and responds to the despair towards a grim future of climate devastation.

MORI (Mining Oceanic Resources International, also Latin for death) is the ‘big evil’ in the game. It represents capitalism, colonialism, extractivism of extracting natural resources, then using the resources to create products for money, churning a machine for more extraction and destruction. They represent a factory logic where endless production and productivity is valued over life and nature. They destroy ocean life, and livelihoods of (indigenous) people living in balance with their environment. 

Historically, colonialism broke our sacred link to nature, fostering a worldview that reduced nature to a mere commodity for extraction. By dehumanizing colonized peoples—labeling them as "savage" or "sub-human"—colonial powers justified treating human beings as expendable natural resources, to be mined and exploited much like coal. This is also why indigenous cultures living close to these potential deep sea mines continue to be treated as subhuman and are not taken seriously in their desires to protect nature.

The game instead invites players to reclaim the wild and the unknown, the mystical and the magical, the spiritual and otherworldly, the strange and the beautiful, the mysterious and the monstrous, through being part of One Ocean Alliance. OOA is an assortment of living creatures that are unlikely to work together, yet aligned in their shared enemy of the extracting machine. OOA connects human (shamanic) players, plant/ algae life, mermaid, goddess, kraken, starfish, electric eel, ghost pirates, etc. In the game, players take different actions, e.g. to sabotage the mining operations, reduce pollution, scare away the MORI crew, etc.

Key Values

The values we wish to impart via the game include: growth, (natural) beauty, awe, wonder, balance, grief (for irreparable loss), and especially, care and repair. We want to use the game to open up conversations on deep sea mining, so as to reflect on people’s relationship to the sea, the sacredness of the sea and sea life, spirituality as a form of resistance, sustainability, multi-species justice, and eco-activism. We want to invite re-imagination and the creation of new myths.