Bhag Corona: XLRI students develop an educational online game

NEW DELHI:Two students at Xavier School of Management (XLRI) have developed an educational online coronavirus game to educate people on how to stay safe and fight the coronavirus.

The students - Akram Khan and Anushree Warade - both MBA students at XLRI, Jamshedpur, have decided to call their browser game called “Bhag Corona”, a sly reference to a Central Government minister's effort to ward of the virus by chanting "Corona Go". In early March, before the lockdown but after the number of cases of coronavirus infections had started rising, the minister of state for social justice and empowerment, Ramdas Athawale, had drawn much ridicule for leading a group in chanting “Corona Go”. The game also features the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and has the chant, “Corona Go”, set to a beat playing in the background.

The game developers claim that they have inculcated the World Health Organization's guidelines for personal protective measures and hygiene to fight against COVID-19 in their game. Within one day of its release, the game has been played over 5,000 times, they said.

The game

In the educational shooter game, a player has to shoot a vaccine on viruses that spawn on the screen. The game’s avatar for the shooter is Modi who replaced the syringe in an earlier design. The game becomes progressively tougher at higher levels. The player has to score higher to reach the higher levels. At the advanced levels, the virus starts to become smarter. Initially, it only moves horizontally but at advanced levels, it learns to move in different directions and at a faster speed. If the player misses the virus, the game ends and an educational message pops up on the screen such as “FACE: Don’t touch it” and “HANDS: Wash them often and so on”.

The objective of the game is to spread awareness about how to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The game is currently available for free on https://bhagcorona.com. It can be accessed on all devices like mobile phone, tablet and desktop computer.

Khan and Warade said in a statement: “We realized people are bored and restless during the quarantine period and a game would be the most effective way to spread the message. We also plan to create more such games spreading awareness and a social message in the future.”

The game developers request everyone to play the game, stay safe and spread the word.

Also read:

• National Book Trust to launch book series on coronavirus
• Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak: Latest Updates

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