Rock, paper, pigeon: Exploring speculative ecologies through more‐than‐human play

As interactive technologies and playful storytelling increasingly explore posthuman and more‐than‐human perspectives, opportunities emerge to reframe natureculture heritage—as it recognizes that human lives, technologies and societies are always connected with the lives and environments of other species and ecosystems—as intrinsically entangled and participatory. Traditional heritage games, however, often remain anthropocentric in their narratives and perspectives.

This paper introduces Rock, Paper, Pigeon (RoPPi), a board‐based storytelling game designed as a participatory artefact to challenge these conventions by immersing players in speculative more‐than‐human storytelling and mediating human–nonhuman engagement. Set in Madeira Island's luscious landscape and ecosystems, RoPPi invites players to embody nonhuman entities, encouraging alternative perspectives on natureculture heritage entanglements.

Through two user studies—involving (i) Biologists and (ii) cross‐disciplinary human–computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design professionals—we analysed observational playtesting, pre‐ and post‐play reflections, and the narratives generated through play.

Our findings point to how different disciplinary backgrounds shape engagement with more‐than‐human storytelling, highlighting the potential of speculative, role‐based gamification in fostering empathy, facilitating multispecies ecological awareness and supporting reflective relationships with nonhuman lives. By positioning more‐than‐human play as a participatory method, RoPPi contributes to the expanding discourse on natureculture heritage engagement, reimagining ecological storytelling and environmental interaction design beyond anthropocentrism.