Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham students’ digital board game wins prize at Toycathon 2021

They developed a game on India's monuments

A group of five students from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Chennai campus has created a digital board game, winnning a prize for their effort in the Toycathon 2021.

The engineering students developed a game that takes players on a virtual tour of India’s monuments, titled ‘Treasure Hunt – Indian Heritage’s Lost Treasures’. The game takes players through a set of monuments at the roll of a dice.

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yaksha asks questions and the right answers would win keys to unlock treasures. The game is designed for children and adults, the students say. One who has collected 500 keys is declared winner.

The students have presented it as a game that can be used in schools as a digital learning tool or by tourism organisations as guides. It comes with ‘Did you know’ notifications to enhance the learning experience with augmented and virtual reality.

Team Yukthi’s leader R. Amrita Laasya, a first year ECE student, said the evaluation of digital toys had been completed and the winners were awaiting the evaluation of physical toys.

Toycathon 2021 was an inter-ministerial effort at engaging students, teachers and start-ups to come up with ideas to promote India’s culture and heritage.

“They have announced a sum of ₹50 lakh for 117 winning teams in digital edition and for the winners of physical edition. Each winning team will receive ₹24,000 approximately, we think,” Ms. Amrita said.

Owing to the pandemic the students worked on the project from home. Her teammates include Giris Teja and Sree Rama Aditya from first year ECE department. Giris Teja worked from Tirupati and Sree Rama Aditya from Vijayawada.

The other two students are from the CSE department — Bhavika Taneja, who lives in New Delhi, is in the first year and S. Palaniappan, of Tiruchi, is a third year student.

Their teacher Sreedevi A.G. coordinated the effort from Kerala.