Turn Up the Heat!

Turn Up the Heat is an interactive board game for the entire family. See if your family can survive for a year with limited resources and unforseen events that can stretch you thin.

Turn Up the Heat is the world's first thermostat board game. Why play a game about thermostats? Because it's fun! Not to mention thermostats are widely misunderstood, poorly used, and account for a huge portion of our nation's energy consumption. To win the game you will need to make careful tradeoffs around comfort, money, and the environment.

Get the Game

Download and print out the game elements:

Game Rules
Resource Cards (27 cards)
Event Cards (18 cards)
Player Cards (5 cards)
Gameboard
Play Money ($100s, $50s, $20s, $10s, and $5s)

You'll also need a die and a player token.
Die Token

Play the Game

When you're ready to play, open the Turn Up the Heat App!

Game Play Video

About Us

Turn Up the Heat was produced at Northwestern University by the Tangible Interaction Design and Learning (TIDAL) Lab and the Learning, Interaction, and Media in the Everyday (LIME) Lab.
TIDAL Lab LIME Lab

Game Design: Michael Horn, Reed Stevens, Amartya Banerjee, Pei-Yi Kuo, Laurel Schrementi, Sarah D'Angelo, Harmon Pollock, and Andreas Wadum.

Software: Michael Horn and Amartya Banerjee

Graphic Design: Maisa Morin (maisamorin.com) and Michael Horn

Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant IIS-1123574. Any opinions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. Seed funding was also provided by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern.