EdQuest: Designing a Game That Sparks Real Conversations
Vikram was pushing for technology-forward solutions: micro-improvements, WhatsApp classes, digital tools for a school with infrastructure gaps. Shanthi was arguing for context-aware, human-centred approaches — slower, less scalable, harder to defend on a slide.
Neither was entirely wrong. And that was the beauty of it.
That argument happened during a playtest of EdQuest, a cooperative game designed for Shikshagraha, an NGO working to improve public schools across India. The fact that two players were genuinely debating education policy during a game meant the design was working.
The Problem the Game Was Solving
Shikshagraha faced a communication challenge that many NGOs face: they could describe educational inequities intellectually. They could show data, share reports, tell stories. But making people emotionally understand the systemic complexities — the trade-offs, the daily impossible choices — required something different. Something that gave people agency and emotional stakes rather than just information.
Games are unusually good at this. They put people inside the decision, rather than outside it.
How EdQuest Works
Players cooperate to run a school facing real educational challenges. Each round, challenge cards arrive representing actual problems schools face. Players select Solution Levers (tech interventions, policy changes) and Approach Levers (community involvement, infrastructure) to respond. Successful decisions build public confidence in the school; failures erode it.
The core experience is designed around strategic thinking, discussion, and collaboration — not individual knowledge or trivia. The game is wrong to play alone and right to play together.
Design Constraints That Shaped Everything
Three constraints dominated the design process:
- Conference viability — the game needed to work at a busy conference: short play time, simple rules, immediate engagement.
- Scalability — it needed to function as an ongoing training tool, replayable across different cohorts, not a one-time set piece.
- Subject matter fidelity — the decisions needed to authentically reflect the challenges school leaders actually face, not a sanitised version.
Early prototypes had dice rolls, real-time news mechanics, and elaborate scoring. Playtesting revealed excess complexity that was getting in the way of the conversation. The stripping-away process — removing everything that wasn't essential — took longer than the original build.
The "No Right Answer" Breakthrough
A pivotal design innovation allowed players to justify unconventional solutions if they could explain how implementation would work, provide real-world examples, and allow other players to challenge and red-team their reasoning.
This mechanic encoded the core learning objective directly into the game: complex problems don't have single correct answers. The game didn't tell players this. It made them experience it.
What the Playtest Showed
Players were enthusiastic enough to run multiple rounds across two days and actively recruited others to experience the game. Several participants recommended scaling it to larger organisations.
"Games have this wonderful power to linger — long after we've played them."
The conversations that Vikram and Shanthi were having at the table weren't just about the game. They were about the actual problem the game was designed to illuminate. That's the measure of success: when the game becomes a vehicle for the conversation that matters, not just an activity that precedes it.