I mean ... how else are you supposed to test a novel treatment for dogs? I don't have a good sense for the space, but my prior is higher on silence-given-no-testing than silence-given-tests-on-the-eventual-target here. If they had tests on dogs that showed significant results, I'd expect the headline/pitch/whatever to be "Double the remaining lifespan of your dog!" or something.
Hum. The existing games that most make me think of this approach/style are
City Council (semi-cooperative city management game. Still falls to the MostPointsWin rule because only one player gets elected mayor, but you do need to coordinate throughout in order to keep the city from collapsing into crime, pollution and/or taxpayer flight. I bought this game with the intent of playing it with my kids in order to teach them the sort of social coordination concepts you cover above but I think what you've outlined might be better from that perspective)
I mean ... how else are you supposed to test a novel treatment for dogs? I don't have a good sense for the space, but my prior is higher on silence-given-no-testing than silence-given-tests-on-the-eventual-target here. If they had tests on dogs that showed significant results, I'd expect the headline/pitch/whatever to be "Double the remaining lifespan of your dog!" or something.