By Carla Mortel Baricaua
Photos courtesy of Kawangis Publishing Co.
“We want to make learning fun, as in a cool kind of fun,” and this is the promise of the new board game to hit the market based on Philippine history. Produced by Kawangis Publishing Co., Anyare is the history card game developed for some serious learning while at play. In collaboration with 37 Filipino artists, each of the 101 cards comes with an original artwork, making the game more valuable since the deck is literally a mini gallery at the heart of each game.
The Anyare card game covers pre-historic Philippines all the way to the modern era (500,000 BC to 2018). Each box can accommodate two to seven players, aged 10 years old and above. With each game that can last around 20 mins to an hour, it also comes in two modes: 1) Habi, the beginner game where each player tries to guess when a particular historical event happened, 2) Pili, the advance game where each player takes turns to challenge another player to guess the name of a historical event. In both game mechanics, each player is dealt with cards, and take turns to try and reduce the number of cards on hand. The first one who runs out of cards wins the game.
The Anyare card game was conceptualized and produced by Kawangis Komiks, in fulfillment of its mission “to produce creative materials that uphold and reflect the Filipino culture and values and impart these values to the next generation in such way that is entertaining, engaging, and life-changing.”
Founded in 2015, the husband and wife partnership of Aria and Faye Chelabian started Kawangis Komiks, under the CSM Publishing Co., and launched the Ma-I comic book series. A year later, Kawangis produced and published Incognito and Zona Cero independently. Today, the couple enjoys the company of Lawrence Martin, Fayola Villanueva, and Pam Liban as fellow partners under the Kawangis Publishing Co.
“Each one of us has our core strengths and we play our roles around those strengths. As someone who has a background in Industrial Engineering, aside from being a writer, I also handle the technical aspects of the publishing like copyright, contracts, customer acquisition, and partnerships. Faye handles all the production process, from content development to print production. Lawrence handles the game development area. Fayola is our certified accountant, and Pam is our creative director for branding and marketing,” explained Aria Chelabian, Kawangis Publishing Co. general manager.
Kawangis primarily creates original content/stories for comic books that are founded on Filipino culture and values and merchandise (games, posters, cards) and other print products that are derivatives of our original content. They can also provide services such as comic/story creation as well as character/world creation, developmental editing, storyboarding, penciling, all the way to production layout.
“Year after year, we would innovate and come up with new titles and creative methods in showcasing visual storytelling through our comics and games. Anyare reflects our aim to make our readers learn without realizing it because they are entertained in the process,” Chelabian added.
For the record, the first game ever produced by Kawangis has been the Ma-I card game. Its game characters were based on the comic series of the same title and produced primarily to help people learn Tagalog and Baybayin (ancient Filipino script) through play. Anyare came about when the Kawangis team checked the market and found that not a single game product was based on Philippine history.
“Personally, I got bored in most of my history classes since high school to college (my apologies to my teachers and professors). Textbook learning is really just too boring for someone like me who can’t stay focused for a long period of time. And many people had the same dilemma. Most of the lessons, facts, and knowledge that I have retained in my head are fundamentally tied to the emotion I felt during the time I received the information. Psychology teaches us that if an experience is directly linked to a positive emotion/feeling, there is a higher chance of recall. Multiple sensory inputs, induces higher memory retention. Now imagine, if history is taught not only be listening to your teacher who talks about it, but actually holding it in your hands, and actively thinking about when it happened, that’s involving three out of our five senses already. Whether you guessed it right or wrong, (the mechanics of the game) triggers an emotion, and thus higher recall rate,” Chelabian said.
To engage the collective effort of fellow artists on the creation of the historical card game, Chelabian made an open call on social media for submissions. He also invited some closed friends and hand picked Filipino artists. “All in all we had a good mix of artists from Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao and the USA, coming from different industries and walks of life– art students, game app developers, creative directors, book illustrators, corporate graphic artists, painters, muralists, engineers, animators, paper quill artists, and art teachers.” For their card game artwork, they were asked to recreate from their personal choice of historical events, otherwise the assignments were randomly chosen for them. In recognition of their contribution, an artists’ hall can be found at the back of the gaming mat.
Anyare is a Filipino-coined word that translates to “what happened.” The Anyare card game is available in Buku-Buku Cafe (Las Pinas and Cavite area), Puesto Manila Cafe (Intramuros, Manila), Arrows & Quivers (Davao), and online through the Kawangis Facebook page and Shopee site.
ANYARE ARTISTS
Jom Vega
Faye Villanueva
Jude Klarence C. Pangilinan
Danielle Clemente
Nina Hidalgo
Ian Carlo Rillon
Jappy Agoncillo
Jannah Juarez
Ivan Reverente
John Paul Revilla
Ian de Jesus
Genesis Aala
Malayo Pa Ang Umaga
Aria Villafranca
Jess Nalangan
Wendy del Rosario-Picache
Enrico Usigan
Jme Foronda
Cseline Dela Rosa
Reginald “Kira”
Joyce Pertez
Bash Ralleta
Alreena Levy Lumapas
Dan Matutina
Mary Ann Mendoza
Jan Carlo B. Sarmiento
Aron Lacro
Loreen Mocorro
John Berlin Almanon
Lyle Jacosalem
Patrick Acma
Jem Luz
Coleen “Himitsu” Sajou
Renee Yzabelle Jose
BK Pena
Meynard Tabaranza
Pam Liban
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