Checks and Balances
Board Game
Checks and Balances is a board game I developed and designed for my Thesis Project at Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology.
This game addresses the issue of Environment vs. Economy by having the players develop a town (by setting up factories, residences etc while considering the environmental and economical repercussion of the each action) In order to win, children must try to find a balance between the two- just like one does in the real world.
To develop this, I had to understand what children consider as needs and wants- what is their understanding of consumerism and its impacts for which, I did a little workshop with a few of them from my apartment building.
After my research, I felt like this should be a collaborative game instead of a competitive one, that focuses on decision making- where each action by any player would have a consequence.
After multiple rounds of testing with children, my game play was finally ready for developing.
One of the biggest challenges was explaining this rather tricky topic to children and make it inclusive so that children from all types of socio-economic background can play the game. Moreover, I had never made a game before and even though things had eased up a little, this project was done during the pandemic which added to the difficulties.
4 months later my project was ready for submission.
This game was taken up by the Museum of Solutions, a museum for children by JSW coming up in Mumbai, India in the summer of 2022.
This project took me 4 months to complete
Softwares used: Illustrator,Photoshop
