Anthropic x Lyra Board Game Night

Lyra x Anthropic

For EngFest 2/12, Lyra teamed up with Anthropic for a board game night at the office to celebrate Anthropic's NASA Mars Rover mission, the first time AI helped plan a drive on another planet using Claude. The board game of the night was Terraforming Mars, and Anthropic went all in, buying multiple copies so tables of 5 could run simultaneously across the office. Around 50 people packed into 7/20 Windmill St on a Monday night, and only two of them were from Anthropic, Yeop, the first hire in South Korea to lead startup partnerships in the APAC region, and Zac, one of the first 30 founding engineers at the company. The rest were a mix of everyone and anyone, engineers, students, people from other companies, friends of friends who saw it on Luma and signed up. No presentations, no panels, no name tags. Just people sitting across from each other trying to terraform a planet before the person next to them did. This was Lyra's first ever cross company social event and it set the tone for how we want every partnership to feel from here on out.

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Why Anthropic

Anthropic has become one of the most interesting AI companies in the world and a lot of our engineers were already using Claude from day 1. When they floated the idea to us about doing something together that wasn't a formal meetup or a tech talk, we were in. No pitch decks, no agenda, just come to the office and play board games. Having one of their founding engineers walk through the door and sit down at the same table as someone who found the event on Luma that morning was the exact energy we were going for. No hierarchy, no formality, just people who build things hanging out with people who were curious enough to show up.

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Terraforming Mars

The game itself was no joke. Each table of 5 spent the night raising temperature, oxygen, and ocean coverage on Mars, playing as competing corporations trying to make the planet habitable. Rounds ran long and strategic, nothing like the quick fire Coup or Avalon games the Melbourne office was used to. Having one of Anthropic's founding engineers equally confused by the same game mechanics as everyone else was half the fun. By the end of the night tables were running hot, alliances were falling apart, and people who had never met before were deep in conversation about AI, Mars, and whether anyone actually understood the scoring.

What's Next

Working with Anthropic has been one of those rare collaborations where everyone just shows up as themselves. They're one of the most interesting AI companies in the world right now, and a lot of our engineers have been building with Claude since day one. So when we pitched doing something together, the answer was yes before we'd even finished explaining.What made it work was how easy the whole thing felt. No pitch decks. No agenda. No one playing a role. Just come to the office, play some board games, talk to whoever sits down next to you. One of their founding engineers ended up across the table from someone who'd found the event on Luma that morning,and that was the whole point.