ConneXions

In the near future, the RFIDs are going to be omnipresent, and used across everywhere.
Playing cards could also have RFIDs associated with it.
With technology advancing at such a rapid pace, the idea of surface computing becoming ubiquitous seems a reality.

This is an Idea for a technology based Card Game for children in Rural India.
Thus the scenario is a case in say 2020, where the children in rural India have access to technology in the schools.

Children in Rural India are often told stories from the great epics Mahabharata and the Ramayana and other religious texts. The idea is to enhance the story telling experience using technology and a lot of visuals. The another lying idea is to improve the knowledge about Indian Mythology amongst the children. Of late the trend of telling stories have stopped and hence the children do not get to know the stories that we have grown up with.

People are around a central table that is comprised of a matchbox, a playground , and the stack, that has all the set of cards in the deck. The idea is to match the set of cards one after the other. Every Myth card has a Character card that it is matched onto. The match can be found by placing these two match cards in the area of the table marked as Match box.



There are two set of cards. One the Myth set of card, and one the Character set of card. The game is played with 2 or more people.

The Myth Cards, will be comprising of myths associated with the particular God. The myths are in the form of visual clues and not in forms of text. This is so that the children can go above the reading barrier, and make ConneXions based on the visual clues.



If the correct match is made, the Matchbox plays a story with the ConneXions between the Myth and the Character.

The players are initially given 7 cards. The player have to pick from the stack of cards and if they do not need the card, throw it back in the playground. Any player can pick up any card from the playground at his/her turn.

If the set of cards in the stack are finished, the cards from the playground are taken and shuffled again and kept on the stack.

A bonus point is given if there is a match with three cards. A myth and Two Character Cards.
For Eg: If the Character cards, are of the elephant God Ganesh, and the Lord Shiva, One myth can find a story between them all. Thus this is a bonus point.

Who wins? The person who is able to tell the maximum stories or in other words, make the maximum ConneXions.

Sanctuary makers

Come, lets create more sanctuaries and wildlife preserves for our planet!

The idea is inspired by this clip on creating the Gabon wildlife sanctuaries.
Gabons Parks Tribeca

The idea is to build a sanctuary / wildlife preserve based on the geographic conditions of the place.
Each location would be different for the 4 players.
Each location would require a different combination of resources to make a sanctuary.
Thus, say for Africa region they would require this combination.
A sanctuary here would comprise of 2 water body, atleast 3 species of trees, 3 species of animals.

Similarly for another region the combination required would be different. This combination would be revealed by the winning player only at the end of the game.

4 players start with the 7 different cards.

The goal is to collect the 8 cards to generate a sanctuary. The combination of cards required would be based on the location.
The 8th card would be the final card that they would pick up when they think that including would make the desired combination.

Total number of cards in the stack 48. (7 each of Creators and Destroyers i.e. 42 +3 UN Forces + 3 Ice Age)

The sanctuary creators :
An animal card.
A tree card.
Any water body card.
The UN Forces Card (the player can use this card as any other one resource card, this is the TRUMP CARD.)





The sanctuary destroyers:
The drought (the water body has dried up, player gives up the water body card)
The heat (trees have burnt out , the player has to submit one of his tree card)
The poachers (the player gives up one of the animals card)
The Ice Age Card (the player who gets this card looses after submitting all their card. This card is to be kept in the stack after the first round of distribution of cards has taken place).




Game Play and Rules:
After every turn, a player has to select a card from the stack of cards and submit one on the play area. The next player in turn may pick this card up or take the card from the stack. The selected card is not to be shown to the other users. However if the player gets the Ice Age card,
they have to show it and exit from the game. At this stage all the cards of the leaving player are also added to stack along with the Ice age card and shuffled again.

If a player gets a sanctuary destroyer card and does not have the resource, they have to give up any two resources that they possess. This can be their choice as to which ones they want to give up.

In case of the player having lost all their card, they loose, and are out of the game.

The player who is able to create a sanctuary first with the desired combination is the winner!

This could also be used as a game to increase awareness about the environment about a particular location. There is a good amount of learning involved, since this makes the players aware of the various factors that responsible for the destruction of wildlife and sanctuaries.

The Sanctuary Creators and the Sanctuary Destroyers cards could be further designed based specifically on a particular location and make the game more demanding.

The Pic-Story Tellers

Can story telling be done in a community ? Can each person tell a part of the story and the story is changed every-time a storyteller has their input? This is the inspiration behind this community game.
This is a multi-player card game based on the ancient puzzle of “tangrams”. The ideal age group is between 8-12 years. The game is designed to be played by two or more people. Ideally there should be four people.

The idea behind the game is to improve the player’s story telling capacity and also have some amount of learning at the end of the game. Creating connections with various pictures would enhance creative thinking. We have the players start with a set of 8 cards each.
There are two sets of cards in the pack. Each of these cards of the game has either of these things; it’s either a part of the tangram (the seven pieces), or it’s a picture made out of the tangram. The users would be given 6 cards from the picture cards and 2 from the puzzle card.
In the stack is also a "trump card" that is to be used as a missing piece in any combination that can be tried out. The stack would contain 2 trump cards, 2 cards of each of the seven pieces and 14 other cards. All the cards in the stack are shuffled and kept at one place. Thus assuming that 4 people are playing the game the total number of cards would be (2+ 14 + 14 + 32) i.e. 62 cards.

The picture cards also has the DID YOU KNOW section that contains some interesting information about the character in the card.



Fig: The Picture cards, the trump card and the Puzzle cards


Fig detail of the picture card.

The players have to play two cards at a time and then select two cards from the stack. The stacked cards contain the pictures cards and as well as the cards containing one of the seven pieces of the tangram. The player who starts playing is to throw two cards which have some pictures made out of the tangram. However, they have to start a story by using those cards. So the next player builds onto the story by adding another two cards and having to change the story based on the cards they are playing. This process continues in a circular manner.



When the user selects the two cards on each turn, from the stack of cards they can get two things. One could get the piece card, or the other picture card.
The users who manages to get all the seven cards in the puzzle first , is able to use this as the second card in the set and put an end to the story. This person is declared the winner.

Rules of the Game
1) The story that a player tells has to contain the keywords from the cards and the sentence has to make sense. The characters in the story are defined from the chart available with the various players.
2) The next player has to build a story from where the previous player has left and continue thereafter.
3) The player who plays the card must select two cards for every set of two cards that they throw.
4) For every turn there are these activities that need to be performed.
a) Tell a story using the two cards played.
b) Pick up two cards and keep in his stock.
c) They could also choose to trade any one card of their with one card on the stack.
5) The players are allowed not allowed to exchange card amongst themselves. All dealings need to be done through the stack of cards.
6) The trump card present in the stack could be used as a missing piece in the tangram. This can signify any other geometric shape only. These pieces are rare and only two of them are present in the stack.
7) The person who puts all the pieces of the tangram together first is the winner. However this player has to use his set of images to tell the final part story.
8) In the case of the win, the winner would be having 8 cards. Seven to use as one picture and the eight cards to complete the two cards required to tell add to the story.

The idea is to generate the concept of story telling in children and also help them gain a significant amount of learning by doing so! Playing card games can be fun!