Hello!

We have an extensive booklist and specifically a section on the Age of Exploration; I would start there. For the purposes of your game I would assume the following would be best suited for your needs:

• Longitude by Dava Sobel

• The Age of Reconnaissance by J. H. Parry

• The Diligent by Robert Harms

There is also an extensive list about the Americas specifically that may be of some use to you. Of these the following may be useful at first glance:

• Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

• David Noble Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650.

• Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815

• David Etlis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas

• Anthony Horowitz, A Voyage Long and Strange

Don't let this discourage you from combing the rest of the book list though and finding anything else that may tickle your fancy!

P.S.: Guns, Germs, and Steel is an often criticized book on /r/Askhistorians and Alfred Crosby's book above is unilaterally the choice book recommended in place of it. It came first, it was the one who brought forth what Diamond was saying without the determinism. An excerpt from the last post I linked that puts it best:

Authors like Diamond or Carlin, who go a long way to popularizing the field of history and should be commended for it, seek to use their historical powers to draw a sketch or create a narrative of history that ultimately serves as an explanation for some commonly held (mis)conceptions about the way the world is today. This is precisely the goal of Guns, Germs and Steel. This type of work is very rarely well received among academic circles because it is at once a self-serving project and it provides no new theoretical framework for understanding or practicing history on a smaller scale than the one addressed in the book. Which is why you see the common criticism of GGS that goes along the lines of "as soon as you start taking the analysis down to smaller moments or smaller scales, it falls apart".

I would suggest one of my favorite textbooks on this period, Lockhart and Schwartz Early Latin America. There is enough material there to give you a well-rounded understanding of the basics. I would also suggest incorporating elements from Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest to give you greater footing in the realism department.

I agree with the earlier comment that GGS should be ignored.

The following are books I used during my undergraduate studies and found suitable for discussion of the conquest of the Americas.

Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World

Luis Rivera, A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest of the New World

David Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World

Robert Buffinton and Lila Caimari, Latin American Civilization: History and Society, 1492 to the Present

Benjamin Keen, A History of Latin America

Almost all of these deal with the effects that the colonisation had on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.