Client: Katha India Type: Game Design Duration: April 2018 game design • visual narratives • storytelling
Game as an Extended Narrative
As a part of the award-winning app - KathaKhazana (see the entire project here), I lead the design and development of a game based on the Katha publication, "Choomantar". The story talks about the power of magic, dreams, girl education and making change.
The game takes the story forward by presenting a fortune wheel that the child can press, and see what they can grow up to be through a randomly generated occupation. The exercise will get them thinking about their real goals. It not just pushes them to dream big but also challenge stereotypes related to gendered occupations.
Watch it here:
Design Research
Tamasha magazines which were published by Katha in 1998 were referred to for the activities that were used in print. The major challenge was to transfer it onto a digital platform and still make it interactive and educative.
In a session with 5 year old children, they were handed out blank sheets of paper and asked to draw what they want to be when they grow up. The insights helped us draw a list of occupations for the game.
Words and Linguistics
I collaborated with a teacher to create word-nets that would relate all familiar words, the words used in the writing of the game was an extension of the ones in the story so that a child reaches an overall number of 600 words.