A hungry Meadowkin with none wants to eat one berry
Seeing others eating one and feeling very merry.
When seeing others binging, a Meadowkin might eat a ton.
That berry-bloated feeling is no fun, so it eats none.
Exert peer pressure to win and learn about social dynamics along the way. Only if surrounded by several Meadowkin displaying a new berry eating behavior will a Meadowkin change their own behavior. So to use social pressure to your advantage, you must strategically choose placement of your Meadowkin.
The game works for two, three or four players.
Choose to be one type of Meadowkin. Each type has a different berry eating behavior. Use peer pressure to convert others to your type until you outnumber all. Each type can convert one other type, by surrounding them with several of their own (social pressure). Bingers use local peer pressure to convert Nibblers into Bingers. Nibblers use social pressure to convert Abstainers. This simulates capricious dietary fads in a social network.
To protect against peer pressure from Abstainers, Bingers avoid attacking a certain Nibbler (shown with red arrow).
Abstainers are fewest in number. But by strategically choosing not to attack a particular Binger (yellow arrow), Abstainers let Bingers convert Nibblers, using an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” effect to win.
Converting all your vulnerable tiles might seem a sure path to winning, but it is challenging due to an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” effect.
This effect presses you to consider the whole social system. Learn more about the social dynamics with our bonus computer model, which shows oscillating behavior, when Meadowkin blindly follow peer pressure rules.
Game and art by the Drs. Keane (copyright 2017). Thanks to several gamer families for play tests. Thanks to Cardboard Edison for multiple rounds of play testing and feedback. Thanks to several Game Crafter testers’ feedback on the rulebook.
We can personalize your game. Just send us your photos or drawings.
The Meadowkin also star in our movies showing math as pattern, for example, patterns of geometric growth.
In addition to our beautiful cardboard editions of the game, you can use our computer versions. The simplest one is in Scratch, with drag and drop programming blocks and our original Meadowkin images. Here’s a Meadowkin model in Scratch.
Here’s a version of Meadowkin in Scratch (click here) that uses many more pieces on the board and shows the larger scale patterns. Below is some of the code in Scratch. (This code includes one unecessary but fun frill: asking each Meadowkin to play a note when changing behavior). To see all the code (click here).
Below is an example of the patterns that result from the game, in this larger scale board. The computer allows us to use very large boards and shows us what the patterns look like when played for a long time at a very fast pace.
To see a yet larger scale version, which shows the oscillating and spiraling global patterns that emerge, click here.
To learn more about these oscillations in behavior, read our article “Resilience, tipping, and hydra effects.”
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