SPOTLIGHT | A Homegrown Travel Card Game for You!

Compiled by Sanjana Arun aka ashberry.

In this month’s Odds & Ends Spotlight we are featuring Sidhant Chand, founder and lead designer at Zenwood Games. Read on to know more about this indie board game company, their very first game - Parikrama and the human behind it all. And of course, to get an exciting offer specially for Probably Relevant readers on the purchase of the game.

India’s sure got a history with board games. Saap-seedi, Pachisi, Chowka Bara (made infamous by the Mahabharata) and many more games were invented in the subcontinent and played by our ancestors all over. So it was fun to catch up with someone who is literally carrying on a tradition that goes back centuries and get a sense of where board games are heading in recent times. Sidhant set up Zenwood Games in 2022 with the simple mission of spreading the awesome culture of modern tabletop gaming, especially in India. Through Zenwood, he hopes to create games that are fun, beautiful yet challenging to play with friends, colleagues and family, and make them affordable and accessible to everyone, whether they are seasoned gamers or someone just looking for a new hobby.

Launched in May this year, Parikrama is the very first offering from Zenwood. It is a travel-themed board game where you play as a solo traveller out to explore the world. Whether you take the shortest route to complete your journey or hitchhike and gather stories on the way is a choice left up to you. Your objective in the game is to complete a pattern of 9 beautifully inscribed tiles while completing as many journeys as possible. The game’s rules may seem complex but it’s smooth sailing once you get started. And then you can discover endless possibilities and strategies to take you on all sorts of interesting journeys!

Probably Relevant Side-Note: Even though it is ideally supposed to be played by ages 14 and above, as instructed on the game box, we discovered that Parikrama is easy enough to learn for even younger people. So if you’re looking for some ideal family game night material, look no further.

As for the man behind Parikrama, game development and design have always been the one true calling for Sidhant Chand. As a kid, his hobby was building worlds and creating storylines. He even designed physical games to play with his friends. And like a typical 90s kid, he graduated from newspaper puzzles and boardgames to videogames and gaming consoles. But the one thing that set board games apart for Sidhant was the physicality of it all, or as he likes to call it, the “realness” - the way strategy, worldbuilding and real pieces on a board make a game come alive. As he writes in his blog for Zenwood Games, “The big difference in board games was that the constructed world could actually be felt.”

Sidhant with his creation. This is how he sends out all Parikrama orders. Don't ask how we know. 

Sidhant studied Chemical Engineering and ran the corporate route for a while. But even during his education and work days, he took every opportunity he could to go on a few wild side-quests - being a delegate at an International Youth Forum in Russia, a student ambassador in Dubai, attending climate change activism forums in Bangalore, devouring good food in Delhi and even backpacking in Norway and Eastern Europe.

Just "parikrama"-ing around. Sidhant on the side-quests that inspired the travel card game - Parikrama

Eventually, his career brought him to Mumbai. It was here that Sidhant was introduced to the All-India Board Game Design Lab - a group of dedicated designers, publishers, manufacturers, artists and playtesters who were actively developing the culture of homegrown games. Connecting with the game design community rekindled his passion for the craft and gave him a chance to experiment with board games. And in a couple of years, Sidhant designed and created the popular game Chai Garam - a modern Indian strategy board game with the help of Phalgun Polepalli, director of DICE Toy Labs. In fact, the visual artist for Chai Garam, Aditi Desai is also behind the incredible art in Parikrama.

Probably Relevant Side Note: You can have a look at Sidhant’s design diary for Chai Garam here. It’s got some valuable insight into the game design process and is a recommended read for anyone looking to learn more about making games in the Indian context. You can also learn more about how Sidhant went from NIT Rourkela to game-designer in Mumbai in his two part blog: Now, how did I get into Game Design and Publishing!?

Chai Garam’s success combined with an existential crisis (courtesy the Pandemic, of course) gave Sidhant the chance to really reevaluate things and do the only sensible thing one can do in these times - quit consultant job and set up your very own company to make games. And it is thanks to that decision that we have Zenwood Games and the truly heartwarming experience of playing Parikrama.

Ragini, Hina and the rest of the ArtNowThus crew already have our set in hand and have put together a game afternoon to play Parikrama with friends of Probably Relevant. What exactly are you waiting for?

Parikrama can be purchased (from anywhere in the world) directly from the Zenwood Games store. The game is already on discount for the season, but for a further discount of Rs 200/- especially for our readers, apply the promo code "RELEVANTZEN" before checkout!

And when you do get the game, send us some pictures of you playing and we’ll make you famous on the ArtNowThus Instagram!

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