A team of history enthusiasts, headed by heritage activists, is all set to launch a set of games which will make learning about India's history and heritage more fun. The team, under the name 'HeritageShaala', said that their games go well with the global theme of this World Heritage Day - Inter-generational knowledge transfer - as they are meant for all the age-groups. The cards and board games will be launched later this month.
The card game, known as 'Princely States Trump Cards', will have details of the 83 'salute states' that used to get gun-salutes back in 1947. These trump cards have details of these princely states and their ranks are based on the 'gun salutations' they received. Also, the cards have trivia about the states, providing more information to the players about the history, heritage and related subjects.
"Most of the groups creating activities to make'learning fun' are focusing on STEMs approach (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). As social sciences and liberated arts were being neglected here also, the idea behind creating these games was to make 'history' learning more interesting and easy. The best thing about these games is that anyone between the age of six and sixty can play them," said Nupur Bhatnagar, who spent months researching through the historical data at National Archives, HeritageShaala.
Apart from the cards, the team is also set to launch the first-ever 'Indus Valley Civilization Monopoly' game. Now, one can buy 'Kalinga' or 'Pataliputra', instead of 'Park Street' or 'Bond Street'. The game has all the major Indus valley towns, including Mohen-Jo-Daro, Rakhigarhi, and even Dholavira. The 'Chance/Community Chest', has been replaced with 'Aadesh/Updesh' where trivia related to these towns requires you to pay money to the bank.
"It was fun to apply algorithms/formulas for computing the probability of winning/losing and make sure that people learn more about history, art in the process," said Jaisal Chauhan, a science graduate from Delhi.
Currently priced at Rs 500, the games will be out later this month and will available on online retail platforms as well.
