Zabaan Safar

Welcome to Zabaan Safar. Start your journey from one of the starred locations on the map. Your goal is to make your way back to your starting location by completing a circuit around the path. You get to travel the path by rolling the dice and moving that many places along the path. While traveling, you will move from region to region. Some regions you can pass through easily, but you and your partner will need to answer a question to gain entry in some regions. These regions are marked in yellow. Guess the words on the vocabulary cards successfully and continue your progress. 

Need for the game

Pakistan is a land of many cultures and languages, with at least six major languages and as many as fifty-eight minor languages are spoken across the country (Rahman, 1996). Increased focus on Urdu as the national language and English as the language of the professional sphere in this post-colonial country has meant that limited effort is made towards promoting regional languages. Research shows that languages are closely tied with the culture and identity of communities and their preservation is beneficial for both ingroup and intergroup relations (Jiang, 2000).  

Learning Goals

The learning goals of the game are to increase the players' exposure to different regional languages, build their vocabulary in these languages, and build skills in other communication methods. The learning goals are targeted to address the need for increased communication and understanding across different cultural (often the same as lingual) groups. 

Target Audience and the Context

School-going children aged 11 – 16 years have been selected as the target audience for this game.  The game only targets children attending school as, in order to play the game, basic literacy in English and the ability to read in Urdu script is required. This age group has been selected as around this time most children attending school have built basic literacy in English and Urdu.
While for school-going children, the game is not intended to be played specifically in school or educational settings as it does not require additional facilitation by a teacher. It is intended to be played by children in their free time. The game also does not require the children to have language competencies in any of the other regional languages. 

MDA

Zabaan Safar is a multiplayer game where at least 4 participants are required to play the game. A team of 2 players competes against one or more teams of two players. The game involves the players traveling (by moving their pawns) along a path through different provinces of Pakistan. At different points on the path, the players must collaborate with their team members to act out and guess vocabulary words in different regional languages to continue along and win points. The team whose players successfully complete a circuit on the path and have the most points, wins the game. To see the detailed mechanics of the game, refer to the guidelines given in the downloads. 

The minigame of charades that players get to play if their pawn lands on the yellow circle have multiple interesting aspects and goals. The primary goal of the game, to allow learners to learn new words in regional languages is one that comes into play here. If the player who is acting already knows the word will probably try to act out the word. But if the regional language word is one that they do not know, such as the Punjabi word for ‘our’, transliteration: saadah, they may break it into syllables of saa and dah and act them out through other words or expressions already known to them. The entire process of strategizing whether to act the word literally or break it into syllables and then acting the different parts will allow the player a good opportunity to remember the word. The player guessing the word will also be actively engaged with the process in order to decipher what their team member is trying to communicate. The nature of the game of charades is such that even the players in the opposing team are often quite interested in the performance. The time constraint ensures that the players do not lose attention and remain focused on the task.

The game has been designed on the map of Pakistan and makes use of popular local art form of truck art for the design of other components of the game. This has been done to engage the learner in a board game that draws from things relevant to them, unlike other foreign board games that they usually play. The theme also ties with the goal of increasing communication between cultural groups of Pakistan by allowing the players to role-play as travelers traveling across the country while engaging with different languages. The game is played by two teams of two competing against each other. This involves collaboration and experience of comradery within the team but also competition and strategic planning against the other team. 

Lessons from the Design Process

One of the major challenges in designing this game was finding reliable resources to explain the context of Pakistan and to make the vocabulary cards. In the future, I would like to improve the game design by referring to academics and those proficient in the regional languages. 

One of the things that I found hard at first but ended up enjoying thoroughly was working with Adobe Illustrator to make the visuals for the game. The process involved a lot of time spent watching youtube videos and tinkering with the software but I am proud of what I was able to achieve.