Every decision opens a path and closes others
The branching is drawn live as you play: you see the path taken and, dimmed, the futures left untaken.
Umbral
A game to learn how to decide about the future.
UMBRAL is TacticRisk's digital futures lab. You pick a topic, make decisions and discover which scenario they lead to. It's the same logic we use in strategic foresight, made playable.
- 12 topics
- 3 levels
- Free, no sign-up
How it started
Deciding can be learned, too.
At TacticRisk we work with strategic foresight for organizations that decide ten and twenty years out. Explaining the method again and again, we noticed something: the hard part was never the tool, but the habit of thinking about consequences before they happen.
That habit can be practiced, and the earlier the better. No one is too young to start: whoever learns to look beyond the present and weigh consequences will later be able to decide about their own future instead of having others decide for them.
So we turned the method into a game and opened it to classrooms. Spreading these tools is part of what we do.
Features
How it works.
It's not a quiz with right answers. It's a path built decision by decision, ending in a different scenario depending on what you chose.
Events no one decided appear
Just like reality: disruptions beyond control that force you to keep deciding anyway, with what you have.
There's no right answer
No option is the good one. Each has a real benefit and an explicit cost, and the final scenario emerges from the whole path.
- 12
- topics
- 3
- levels of depth
- 5-10
- minutes per game
- 0
- cost, sign-up and downloads
Who it's for
The same game, three depths.
The level changes the language and the number of decisions, not the rigor of the method.
Primary schools
The Explorer level uses everyday situations: the neighborhood, the park, the school.
Secondary schools
The Analyst level introduces trends, uncertainties and disruptive events.
Universities and organizations
The Strategist level works with variables, actors and weak signals, in professional language.
Anyone with curiosity
You don't need to know anything about foresight to start. That's the whole point.
Free to use and completely free of charge. No sign-up, no downloads and no personal data requested. The game lives in the player's browser.
Try it now.
It opens in the browser, requires no sign-up, and a game takes five to ten minutes.
Play UMBRAL