Kyoto Protocol (2015)

Overview

In Kyoto Protocol, a card game about energy production and pollution, players play as power companies trying to fulfill a set amount of production quotas, while simultaneously avoiding the overuse of resources as this will result in pollution fines.

To produce energy, players draw resource cards from the table to their hand, and play sets of a resource type onto the table as production. The shared deck includes a fixed amount of five types of resources, which are from the most common to the rarest: coal, oil, natural gas, wood and uranium.

The game lasts three rounds and at the end of each round, players check their production. The more cards you have played on the table, the more you produce. If your company cannot produce enough energy for the market, it will be fined for not upholding its end of the contract. In addition, after comparing the production of all players, whoever has used the most of each resource type is fined for pollution. To make things interesting, you have the option of turning your production cards face down, so that they won't be counted as pollution. Though this action requires valuable turns to accomplish, all of the companies might use plenty of effort to mitigate their pollution!

At the end of the game, the player who produces the most energy, while dodging production fines through clever card play, wins.