We hope everyone is staying safe and doing their part to social distance and protect those who are at risk from COVID-19 infection. Since we know that making games can be both fun and educational, we thought we would offer some instructions on how to make your own Phylo cards and games. A pdf of quick instructions and worksheets can be found here; and full lessons broken up by time can be found here.

Phylo is a project that began as a reaction to the following nugget of information: Kids know more about Pokemon creatures than they do about real creatures*. We think there’s something wrong with that. Apparently, so do many others.

Phylo is: (1) a card game that makes use of the wonderful, complex, and inspiring things that inform the notion of biodiversity; (2) an exercise in crowd sourcing, open access, and open game development; and (3) FREAKIN’ AWESOME!

The phylo project is the product of the kind and (frankly) amazing contributions of many many individuals who have given art, science expertise, gaming advice, programming chops, and more. Today, the project sees a continued expansion of new cards and new games being made by organizations and people from around the world, with two main types of games (one like dominoes with a biodiversity theme, and one that is more about hand building that tends to focus on STEM culture concepts).