The Amazing Mumbai Race: Why you should check out this new board game by playing like a local

Pic/Satej Shinde

Remember the Subway Wars episode of How I Met Your Mother? When Robin, Barney, Ted, Marshall, and Lily argue on the fastest way to get to Downtown New York, and decide to race each other there - by bus, cab, or on foot, subway, or ambulance - to prove who's a true New Yorker?

It's the first thing that comes to mind when filmmaker Deepak Thomas drops in at the Sunday mid-day office with SimblyCity, a new boardgame he developed to teach his partner (and gameplay-tester-in-chief) Sajna Sangeet Sivan how to get about in the maze that is Mumbai.

The game designer Deepak Thomas flanked by his partner and muse, Sajna Sangeet Sivan (left), and art director Malvika Sharma. Pics/Satej Shinde

It all started with them moving from Versova to Chandivli in 2021.

"We'd just had our son, Sahas, and it felt like the right time to buy a house. We bought an apartment in Chandivli and loved our life there. But, we realised none of us knew how to get anywhere from there, particularly Sajna," Deepak recalls.

So they bought a map of the city. Instead of letting it gather dust on their wall, "we laid it out on a table and rolled the dice to move from one place to another". And that's how Deepak's attempt to teach his wife about the city's geography became a boardgame.

The couple, along with art director Malvika Sharma, turned this very relatable Mumbai problem into a fun game that mimics all the ways we strategise how we move in this city: take an auto rickshaw and spend money to save time, or get a bus pass on the cheap but agonise in slow-moving traffic? Take cabs till you run out of money and then walk everywhere, or set aside extra time to buy train and Metro tickets before beginning your commute? Now, not only is everyone on our team a certified Bombayphile obsessed with all things Mumbai, but these are genuinely questions we debate about in the newsroom on the daily, so we were truly excited to play!

Your playscape is the entire city laid out on the board, with all transport routes marked there

Teaching the game takes about 20-30 minutes, Deepak had warned us, and then we could either go full hog and play a three-hour session, or play a 90-minute session with three short races across town. It's still a working day, so we pick 90 minutes. Commuters, Deepak tells us, can travel in the following ways (in descending order by cost): cab, autos, Metro, Monorail, train, bus, or on foot. To win the game, one must not only move quickly, but also save money (sigh, tell us about it).

Throughout, the game - and your fellow players - will throw all-too-familiar challenges at you: processions, mega blocks, rain, treefalls, cattle blocks. Any and all of these can slow you down, until you get a card that cancels the misfortune.

Commuting in Mumbai has never been so much fun!

We won't lie, there are a lot of moving parts to the game and the tutorial can seem a bit daunting, especially to those not used to complex campaign games. However, once you start playing, the logic of SimblyCity feels very familiar: if it rains, trains run late; a cab is likely to be faster than a bus.

Interestingly, even though both commute time and cost are imaginary constructs in the game, most players in our session seemed to play a frugal game. One team member chose to walk almost the entirety of the game, and despite that, went on to win one out of the three races. Guess anything is possible in SimblyCity, just like the Mayanagari that is its muse!

Our Editor, Aastha Atray Banan, celebrates on winning a race and takes a selfie at the destination, Bhandup Flamingo Sanctuary

Our Editor, Aastha Atray Banan, won the other two out of three races - and the entire campaign - armed with nothing but a bus pass. Each race ends when you reach the destination and take a selfie there, in true Bambaiyya style. But even among those who didn't win a single race, there was a newfound understanding of the lay of the land in aamchi Mumbai. Even now, when we close our eyes, we can picture the cityscape and the transport lines snaking through it. And even those among us who are not very well-versed with Greater Mumbai are now confident we know our way to each of the destinations from our three races: Gaimukh Promenade in Thane, the Bhandup flamingo sanctuary, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombay.

Ultimately, we can foresee this game being very popular not just with boardgame enthusiasts, but anyone who'd like learn how to navigate this city better, whether that's students, or anyone new to the city, or even true-blue Mumbaikars who may not have explored the city beyond the closest neighbourhoods.

The game should be available to buy commercially early next year; an announcement will be made on their Instagram (@simblycity). Until then, Deepak, Sajna, and Malvika are making rounds of boardgame conventions here and in other metros, teaching more and more people how to gamify the city commute. They will next appear at Meeplecon, a tabletop gaming convention being held at Nesco, Goregaon East, on October 17-18.

Happy commuting!