Board games have shown promise as educational tools, but their use in engaging learners with the complex, long-term trade-offs of forest management remains strikingly underdeveloped. Addressing this gap, we investigate how forest growth simulation data can inform decision-making through information visualization and gameplay mechanics. We designed a serious game, SIMA-Play, that enables players to make informed forest management decisions under dynamic environmental and market conditions, simulating forest growth over time and comparing player performance across economic and sustainability outcomes. By using visualization to give players feedback on their choices, at the end of the game, it supports systems thinking and makes the trade-offs in forestry practices easier to understand and discuss. The study concludes with a research roadmap that outlines future experiments, longitudinal studies, and digital versions of SIMA-Play to assess its long-term effects on learning and engagement.

翻译：棋盘游戏已被证明是具有潜力的教育工具，但在让学习者理解森林管理中复杂且长期的权衡策略方面，其应用仍明显不足。为弥补这一空白，我们研究了森林生长模拟数据如何通过信息可视化和游戏机制辅助决策。我们设计了一款严肃游戏SIMA-Play，使玩家能够在动态环境与市场条件下做出明智的森林管理决策，模拟森林随时间变化的生长过程，并比较玩家在经济与可持续性方面的绩效。通过可视化手段向玩家提供决策反馈，游戏最终支持系统思维，使林业实践中的权衡更易于理解和讨论。本研究以研究路线图作为总结，规划了未来实验、纵向研究及SIMA-Play数字版本，以评估其对学习效果与参与度的长期影响。