Dhar Pakad
Children learn cleanliness as a slogan, not a habit. We designed a two-player board game where a visiting officer and a village head race to uncover hidden habits, and players argue about which ones are sustainable.
Duration
4 months
Skills
Design Research
Game Design
Visual Design
Illustration
Collaborator
Apoorv Anurag
Outcome
Educational game published paper in India HCI 2024
Paper in the India HCI 2024 proceedings (Springer) · Playtested in 13 sessions with adults and students aged 9 to 16
Move, then choose where to look. The BDO sticks to the roads and the Pradhan knows the shortcuts. Each turn, pick a tile, then a direction: Rage and Respect decide whether you see one, two or three tiles, and whatever falls in that line of sight is dealt with. The full game adds conversation cards, power-ups and panic tokens
Children knew the slogan, but not always the habit
Waste segregation and sanitation are taught as facts to remember. Campaigns like the Swachh Bharat Mission raised awareness through posters and adverts, but awareness rarely turns into everyday action.
Littering on buses, garbage dumped beside homes and pollution at tourist spots had become normal. The few educational games that existed were built around Western settings or abstract systems that Indian children don’t see in their own streets. Interviews with children, parents and young adults made the gap personal.
“While I was travelling in a bus once, somebody spat paan on me.”
23yo M, research interview
“An empty plot beside my house has been turned into a spot for a garbage dump.”
42yo F, interview
“We try teaching kids in the primary school to take care of the environment, but we do see repeated problematic instances such littering, and electricity misuse. I wish that was different”
45yo F, Teacher, research interview
Everyone had a story, and nobody thought it would change. Excerpts from semi-structured interviews.
It had to teach without turning into a quiz
No right answers handed out
Research on educational games and UNESCO’s guidance both point the same way: people retain what they decide, not what they are told. So activities are hidden until discovered, and players have to judge whether each one is responsible or not. The learning happens in the argument.
Familiar to a 9-year-old and a 16-year-old
The game had to work across a wide age range and in Hindi as well as English. So it is set in an Indian village with a lota, paan and a charpai, borrows the surprise-inspection premise from TVF’s Panchayat, and uses Baloo 2 for rounded, readable type in both English and Devanagari.
Playtests rewrote the rules three times
Thirteen sessions across three rounds, with adults first and then students, each ended in a rule change.
Neutral chips over colour-coded ones
In the student round, players sorted activity chips by colour without reading them. The colour was doing the thinking. We removed the visual cues and added a Sustainability Guidelines Sheet, so players had to read each activity and argue whether it was responsible. What we gave up: speed. Turns got longer.
When the chip gives away the answer, nobody argues about Mukesh. Activities are written around villagers, and some are deliberately hard to call. Switch to “Colour-coded” to see what students did in Playtest 3
Conversation over chance
In Playtest 2, players rarely used the encounter rules. We replaced them with Conversation Cards, so meeting the other player became a bluffing, role-playing exchange instead of a dice roll. Students later named the dialogue as their favourite part.
Every observation became a rule. Adult sessions balanced the game; student sessions tested whether it taught.
A look that feels like the village, not a textbook
The visuals had to make sustainability feel playful and familiar, so the game avoids an educational look and leans into a lively Indian village.
Two characters you can read at a glance
The Block Development Officer looks clean and official, signalling authority and accountability. The Village Pradhan is relaxed and approachable, someone who knows everyone. The contrast sets up their uneven relationship before the first turn.
An identity built from the board
The title is set in English and Devanagari. The logo uses an isometric construction taken from the hexagonal tiles, so its angles echo the board’s geometry. A natural green palette carries the sustainability theme, with warm yellow for energy and play. Baloo 2 handles both scripts with rounded, generous forms that young players read easily.
Five mechanics that make players argue
Players explore a shared village, uncover hidden activities and decide whether each is responsible. Every discovery tips the balance between the Pradhan’s Respect and the BDO’s Rage.
Rather than aiming for perfect symmetry, the mechanics were rebalanced across seven rounds of prototyping, so neither role dominated and the learning goal stayed intact. To shorten the learning curve, I drew a short comic that opens the game: the BDO arrives for a surprise Swachh Bharat inspection while the Pradhan tries to save the village’s reputation. Players learn why they are moving before they learn how.
Each mechanic turns a sustainability idea into a decision. Select a mechanic to see what it adds and which playtest it came from.
Children kept talking about it after the game ended
Pre- and post-play discussions showed more awareness of composting, cutting plastic waste and using resources responsibly. Players argued over environmental choices during the game, and parents said their children were still discussing them at home.
The result is a complete, balanced board game for ages 9 to 16 that adults enjoy too. It combines strategy, role-play and storytelling to get players talking about cleanliness and sustainability, and it became a peer-reviewed chapter in Springer’s India HCI proceedings on how board game design can build environmental awareness.
