“Remember the popular game Name Place Animal Thing?” asks Santhosh Subramanian, host of the Board Game Evening at Amethyst, and owner of an online toy-lending library called Bambaram, to a small gathering of game enthusiasts. A few in the crowd snicker, the rest are excited about diving into their nostalgic pasts.
Everybody knows the rules of the popular game that found a place in every Nineties kids’ fun routine. “However, this game comes with a twist. Scattergories, as it’s called, follows the same concept, but with a larger number of categories,” announces Santhosh. The crowd of around 40, divides itself into pairs, and fetches papers and pens. Santhosh rolls the dice to get the alphabet for that round. The categories range from simple ones like: ‘A common nickname’ and ‘A thing from the Sixties’ to wacky ones like ‘A way to greet a person’, ‘Something that you wear above your waist’ and more. Sample this: Something that you are scared of, and that starts with letter L? Pat comes the answer from a participant: Love.
“We did not expect this many to turn up. We were expecting a crowd of say, 25,” says Murali Satagopan, a stand-up comic, and co-founder of Brigge, an app that has collaborated with Bambaram and Amethyst to host the Board Game Evening. Even as Murali mouths the words, a couple of others trickle in. They exchange knowing smiles. Most of them were already introduced to each other on the app. According to the app’s other co-founders, Sampath Jagannathan and Prasanna Jagannathan, Brigge, an app that focuses on “building a community, helping discover activities and whipping up interactions”, has been aiding people with common interests, to get together for activities that range from movie-watching, motorcycle rides, food walks, sports, art and craft events, and more.
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Inside The Folly, a compact room on the path leading to the Amethyst restaurant, the crowd is now split into groups. They huddle around tables where the board games are spread out. There is Jenga, where players have to strategically remove one block at a time from a tower built using 54 such blocks; Pictureka, which requires the player to spot a specific image from a potpourri of images; and the evergreen ones like Scrabble, Taboo and Scotland Yard.
Santhosh, whose expertise lies in understanding a child’s interest based on the game he or she plays, and helping them channelise it, says, “Board games for adults are not a lot different from those that kids play. The games can be customised. For example, Scattergories can be played by both kids and adults. I have personally held workshops on game-making for children, where I asked them to customise Monopoly based on the theme Zoo. They came up with something called Zoopoly!”
The evening, which was slated to wrap up by 6 p.m., extended by almost two hours. The excited voices are yet to die down. “What’s in store for the next board game evening?” we ask Santhosh, even as he meticulously packs the cards, dice and papers back into their boxes. “Rapid Door (pictionary using clay), Ticket to Ride (a railway-themed board game), Settlers of Catan (Players engage in building holdings while trading and acquiring resources)... there are so many,” he says.
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The event marked the launch of Board Game Evenings at The Folly. The venue is open for enthusiasts to gather for an evening of games through Brigge.