As the Radio Game github project states out: a Meshtastic powered, Borges/Boal/Propp inspired workshop toolkit to make events participants get to know specific elements of an event
The first Radio Game has taken place at Shenzhen Maker Faire 2025 which is becoming a very important moment for me to see old and new friends, and in this case playing with them and creating engaigng experience for people to play with technology and storytelling.
Premises and intentions:
The aim of this game is to lead participants to discover elements of a place (place: a fair, an event, a place of public interest) through interaction with other users and objects, in the completion of a mission.
The subject-hero solves a educational mission through a object-value. The most ancient story told in the steppe around the fire. Vladimir Propp in Morphology of the Folktale.
There are many cultural references for this approach in my mind: there is a bit of Borges in this gamification of the present, almost as if trying to make sense of the present through a game (“The Lottery of Babylon”), but also Augusto Boal and his Invisible Theater. And then Nanni Loy with the mirror…
Much more simply, it is a matter of building a fixed narrative infrastructure that the user must go through in order to achieve something. In doing so, they will discover certain things (about themselves, the space they are in, life).
Many scholars argue that learning in this way (outside one’s comfort zone) is more productive, stays better in the brain. Traumas 😂🫣.
Users
There are three types of users in this game:
- Event participants, divided into groups of 3-4 players.
- Actors within the event who will help the participants group to go in a certain direction.
- Organizers who monitor everything and produce the game.
How does it work?
Participants are given T1000E radios (or any Meshtastic radio?). Through the radios, they can communicate with each other and with the game master node, as well as with other users.
Example: Mission #1 for group #1 is to take object #1 from the “man with the yellow hat”: they will have to find him using location tracking or simply by sight. The character will give them an object which, if taken to location #1, will allow them to move on to the next step.
Hendra made this map, which is super cool!
Check the Github of the project for the latest update (major update coming)