Exploring Ecologies at Play with Dow and FabCafe Bangkok

Dow has operated on Thailand’s eastern seaboard for nearly sixty years. It opened its first Thai office in 1967, and Dow Thailand Group now runs its largest manufacturing base in the Asia-Pacific region in Rayong’s Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate, Asia Industrial Estate and WHA Eastern Industrial Estate (Map Ta Phut). The company describes its work as fostering “effective collaboration and networks to bring about sustainability for its business as well as society.”

The collaboration with Dow’s work at Prasae began in 2009, when company volunteers joined local communities to plant mangroves and clean up beaches near the manufacturing site in the Pak Nam Prasae sub-district of Rayong. Over the years the degraded land returned to forest. That effort grew into the Dow & Thailand Mangrove Alliance, formed with the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The Alliance now covers more than 5,000 rai across five provinces, with Pak Nam Prasae as its pilot site, and its work spans reforestation, marine-debris management, and a carbon-credit mechanism drawn from mangrove forest. The program contributes to the national goal of protecting thirty percent of Thailand’s mangroves by 2030.

ROYLANE extends that work into education. The game was developed by FabCafe Bangkok and funded by Dow, and it is set in the Prasae Estuary that Dow has spent years helping to restore. It treats coastal restoration as a system. Players follow how mangrove roots generate biomass. Mudflats support benthic life. Migratory birds depend on those feeding grounds during long journeys.

Lane, a black-winged stilt, guides players through the mudflat.

The game asks players to read a coastline. They move through menus for animals, reptiles, birds, trees, and problems, collecting and placing species while learning about each one. The mangrove apple, for example, has salt-tolerant roots. Choices carry consequences. Plant the right species and biomass builds, the mudflats fill with life, and the birds return. Plant poorly, or let waste into the system, and the damage appears. A running score tracks the effect of each decision.

The game hopes players come away with a few ideas:

• “Right tree, right place.” Mangrove restoration needs specific conditions. Planting saplings on empty land can do more harm than good.
• A mangrove forest is not enough on its own. It works together with seagrass beds, mudflats, and changing tides as one system.
• The estuary depends on its tides. Water levels determine which habitats are exposed and where animals can feed.
• Prasae is one stop on a longer migratory route. Protecting it helps sustain a wider network of habitats.

ROYLANE’s plant guide displayed on screen, showing the mangrove apple (Sonneratia alba).

ROYLANE was developed in partnership with FabCafe Bangkok with the support of Dow and in close collaboration with the 30×30 Coalition, the Green World Foundation, and the Bird Conservation Society of Thailand. Their ecological knowledge and community ties shaped the project throughout.

During the 16th National Mangrove Seminar 2026 in Chanthaburi, ROYLANE underwent focus group testing and received a positive reception. Participants responded to the idea of the ecosystem as one connected system, and several said it helped them notice elements like tides and mudflats that are easy to overlook.

At the 2026 National Mangrove Symposium

FabCafe Bangkok and Dow describe the hope behind the game simply with:
“Restoration requires understanding first, if we act without context, we may accidentally make nature worse instead of better.” 

ROYLANE releases at Map Ta Phut on June 29 and 30. It turns years of restoration work at Prasae, carried out by Dow alongside its partners and local communities, into something people can play.

If you enjoyed ROYLANE, there’s more to explore. Other games and interactive experiences produced through FabCafe and its community partnerships include Ocean Meadow, a multiplayer metaverse that takes players into Thailand’s coastal waters to explore and restore seagrass meadows, and its work on  Sustaining Our Oceans, a UNESCO marine-education project with Fast Retailing for young people across Southeast Asia and Japan.