“A truly Indian Game!”
Aksharit™ started as Manuj’s Design project 4 years ago to create a board game for Indian Languages. On researching, it turned out that there were hardly any word games in Hindi. This was surprising especially if one considered the myriad of such games for English such as Scrabble, Boggle, Lexicon etc. Some of them like Scrabble had been around for more than 60 years.
However the most astonishing fact which really fuelled our curiosity was that it exists for more than 30 world languages but none of these languages cover any Indian language, given that language like Hindi is the 3rd most spoken language across the globe.
Hence we studied the differences between English and Hindi and it was not long before we realized the obstacles one would have to go past in order to create such a game. Moreover being a game, the solution had to be very simple to understand yet so unique and novel that no one had ever chanced upon it. Aksharit™ achieves this through the inclusion of certain unique features which have emerged through years of thorough research into Hindi and various Indian languages, consultation with experts both in the field of languages and design, considerable intuitive insights, and extensive playtesting with adults and children.
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Aksharit™ is a family of games with 3 versions catering to different age groups
Apart from the above games, due to the large number of components included with the game, AKSHARIT™ becomes a rich language activity development kit. In the hands of a creative parent or teacher, it is a magician’s hat from which various games and activities could be pulled out. Language activities of different time intervals, varying ability levels and covering diverse set of concepts can be planned.
"Thank you ever so much for your Hindi game Aksharit,
which I've just received. It looks great and I'm sure it'll prove to be an incentive for all the kids in the family to learn Hindi with a smile."
Veena Sheshadri (Co-Author, Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul)
"Living in Bangalore, I am constantly on the lookout for hindi books and games.
Today, I played the "adult" version of Aksharit with both my children (one by one)
and they were so engaged that not once did the b word (i.e. boring) come up!"
Rachna (Book Evangelist, mother of 8 and 12 year olds)
I and my 7 year old son play it regularly and are totally hooked on it. Not only its fun, it gives my son a good platform to learn hindi.
Rakesh Godhwani (Professor, IIM Bangalore)
Devendra (24 yrs, Primary School teacher, Abhanpur - Chhattisgarh)
Dr Chandrika Mathur (Author - Hindi ki Duniya, Scholastic publication)
News
- MadRat Games featured as part of the Cover Story on The WEEK's Republic Day edition. See Article
- MadRat Games’ story covered by Hindustan Times , The Hindu»
- IIT Bombay features an article on the Founders. See Article
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Aksharit's mobile version launched by NOKIA - bundled with Nokia touchphones, available for FREE on OVI store for 6 months.
Go to OVI»
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Aksharit's educational version soon to be launched by INTEL on the AppUp store.
- Concept Reinforcement Idea Board presented by MadRat Games in the International Conference Desigining for Children hosted by IDC, IIT Bombay.
- Concept Reinforcement Idea Board featured as the cover article in Navtika Journal published by Govt of India.
- 4th My Toy Factory workshop conducted. Feb workshop to be announced soon.
- MINT covers MadRat Games. Go to MINT»
- MadRat Games speaks at the annual TiE Entrepreneurial Summit '10. Video
- MadRat Games speaks at Game Development Summit '10 hosted by NASSCOM alongside IndiaGames, KreedaGames, iBibo. Picture
- Aksharit deployed by State of Chhattisgarh in 1000 schools in Jan '10 with overwhelming feedback. Dainik Bhaskar, Raipur , Dainik Bhaskar, Jaipur»
- Aksharit kits now adopted by West Bengal.
