Image Courtesy : www.facebook.com/pg/ReachIITM

A digital game, IITM Covid Game, has been developed by the researchers of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras to raise awareness among the general people, especially children, about the COVID-19 virus.

Since the game is browser-based, the game can be played on any device including PC (Personal Computers), Laptops, Mobile Phones, and Tablets among others.

The team has translated the game to several Indian regional languages, on the basis of their feedback from different onlookers and research on initial prototyping. Apart from English, the other languages in which the game is available are Hindi, Assamese, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Oriya, Tamil, Sanskrit, and Telugu.

The game has been created by the students of IIT-M who were part of the nine-credit elective program, namely 'Let's Play To Learn', scheduled from January to May 2020 in which they were upskilled for game-based learning techniques and tools. Inspired by 'Super Mario' game, this game also has a character who confronts various things such as washing hands, masks, and things to avoid like handshakes, hugs, etc. When the character does the right thing, points get added up and also get deducted when the character fails to do so or does the wrong thing.

The game is available free of cost and can be accessed from www.letsplaytolearn.com. The game can also be accessed from the official website of the IIT-Madras.