Does your child exhibit an insatiable hunger for expensive board and computer-based games, only to lose interest in them in a matter of weeks? Perhaps there's something about the games themselves that fails to hold their interest.
Hoping to come to the rescue of harried parents everywhere, students of the Industrial Design Centre in Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) have created seven games designed to keep children engaged. The games will be displayed on Thursday at the IIT-B campus between 3pm and 6 pm for campus residents and their children.
The all-new games, which range from those for pure fun and storytelling to testing strategic skills and special thinking abilities, are ready after two months of hard work. Twenty-two first-year students of the Master's of Design (M Des) programme, who worked on the project as part of their elective course, now look forward to feedback from their target audience — children.
Namita Maheshwari, a first-year student of M Des (product designing), was part of a three-member team who created the Ball Maze Wall. She told DNA, "We had put up the game prototypes at the IIT-B Techfest earlier this month. After getting a lot of inputs, we have come up with the final designs. But we are ready to modify further based on the feedback we get on Thursday. We will then finalise the designs and put them up on our website to attract manufacturers."
Students say that once their games enter the market, they will not cross the Rs40 price mark. Aimed at a mass audience, these games are expected to be made available at railway stations too.
Prof UA Athavankar, head of Industrial Design Centre, who has been mentoring M Des students who design such games over the last five years, told DNA, "The students conceive new game ideas and test them in front of others, especially children, and then put up the final product for mass production. We have been able to launch many games through the Funskool brand in the past."
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