Working alongside resilience professionals, community organisations and local residents, the project developed All Hands, a free, print-and-play game designed to help people explore community resilience through discussion, collaboration and shared decision-making
Rather than simulating emergency response in a highly technical way, the game creates an accessible environment where people can learn about preparedness, understand the unequal impacts of natural hazards and explore how different organisations and communities work together before, during and after a crisis.
So where did it start?
Communities across Scotland are facing increasingly complex risks, including flooding, severe weather, power outages and other civil emergencies. While Local Resilience Partnerships and Community Risk Registers provide valuable planning tools, these resources can often be difficult for members of the public to engage with directly.
Early discussions with resilience practitioners highlighted several common challenges:
- Making resilience planning more accessible to communities
- Encouraging wider public participation in preparedness
- Addressing volunteer fatigue within community resilience groups
- Creating opportunities for intergenerational learning
- Bridging the gap between strategic planning and lived experience
This project set out to explore whether serious gaming could provide a practical, engaging way to bring these conversations into communities.
Between September 2025 and January 2026, Socialudo worked with community members and resilience professionals across Clackmannanshire and the Scottish Borders to co-design, test and refine the new community resilience game. The project used an iterative co-production approach, with each playtesting session informing improvements to the game’s mechanics, accessibility and supporting guidance.
Participants included representatives from:
- Emergency planning
- Housing
- Health services
- Transport
- Community resilience groups
- Housing associations
- Residents with lived experience of flooding
- Community volunteers
- Community organisations
Community involvement was key to the project and embedded throughout the ways of working. Participants helped shape all parts of the resource, from game language to the outlining of locally relevant scenarios. By bringing together people with different experiences and perspectives, the project ensured the final resource reflected both professional knowledge and lived experience.
The Result?
The project’s main output is All Hands, a free, print-and-play serious game that encourages groups to work together to protect a fictional community from flooding. Players take on different stakeholder roles and must:
- Assess emerging risks
- Prioritise vulnerable residents
- Allocate limited resources
- Work collaboratively
- Make decisions under pressure
- Reflect on preparedness and recovery
Importantly, no individual player can solve every challenge alone. The game has been intentionally designed to demonstrate how effective resilience depends upon communication, partnership working and shared responsibility.
What did the project find?
Playtesting generated valuable insights into how communities understand resilience and how engagement can be improved.
Community engagement works best through discussion
Community participants responded positively to the collaborative and narrative elements of the game, using it to share local knowledge, discuss lived experience and reflect on preparedness. Rather than focusing on technical detail, participants explored questions around responsibility, vulnerability and collective action, demonstrating the value of serious games as conversation starters.
Clear language improves accessibility
Participants highlighted the importance of using simple, consistent language when discussing resilience. Interestingly, conversations about the meaning of resilience became one of the project’s strengths, helping groups develop a shared understanding of what resilience looks like within their own communities.
Collaboration is central to resilience
Across every playtest, participants quickly recognised that successful outcomes depended on communication and partnership working. The game reinforced the idea that resilience requires coordinated action among emergency responders, local authorities, community organisations and residents.
Lived experience shapes decision-making
Players consistently prioritised protecting vulnerable people, prompting rich discussions around inequality, accessibility, caring responsibilities and the uneven impacts of flooding. These conversations directly influenced improvements to the final game design.
Who can use the resource?
The game is suitable for a wide range of users, including community resilience groups, community councils, local authorities, schools, housing associations and many other groups. Its flexible design also allows groups to customise scenarios to reflect their own local communities and hazards.
So what is the impact of this work?
The project has left a practical, freely available resource that organisations can continue using long after the funding period.
Early feedback suggests the game has potential to:
- support resilience education in schools
- encourage intergenerational learning
- strengthen cross-sector partnerships
- improve community conversations around preparedness
- build confidence in discussing natural hazards and emergency planning
By making resilience planning more accessible and engaging, the project demonstrates how creative approaches can help bridge the gap between research, policy and community action.
If you would like to learn more about the project, you can read a fantastic blog from Professor Vikki McCall, Social Ludo Creative Director and a co-creator of the game.
We also hosted a joint webinar for the launch of the game, which goes into more detail about the project as well as a video demonstration of how the game works.
