The game is not sophisticated graphically, compared to what you can find out there in this multi billion dollar industry. The controls are rudimentary, the basic move right and left, move up and down and shoot to destroy obstacles. It is after all an arcade style game. The main character of the game is you, the player. Your main goal is to become free of the cycle of reincarnation on earth (the meaning of moksha) and reunite with God, which occurs after you have gone through all of the game levels and successfully answered the quizzes on Hindu teachings at the end of each level. Before you attempt the quizzes the teachings are presented after end of each level.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Moksha – An Arcade Style Hindu Based Game
Last month, I received an email with a request to review a game called Moksha. Initially when I saw the email I thought the game was probably one that was (as is mostly the case) some kind of game that was named moksha simply for the sake of novelty. There are many games out there that have Hindu philosophical words such as avatar, karma or maya, but have really nothing to do with the actual concept of these words except perhaps for some really far fetched connection to the concept. However, with Moksha - The Game I was pleasantly surprised, because the game actually teaches the concept of moksha.
The game is not sophisticated graphically, compared to what you can find out there in this multi billion dollar industry. The controls are rudimentary, the basic move right and left, move up and down and shoot to destroy obstacles. It is after all an arcade style game. The main character of the game is you, the player. Your main goal is to become free of the cycle of reincarnation on earth (the meaning of moksha) and reunite with God, which occurs after you have gone through all of the game levels and successfully answered the quizzes on Hindu teachings at the end of each level. Before you attempt the quizzes the teachings are presented after end of each level.
The game is not sophisticated graphically, compared to what you can find out there in this multi billion dollar industry. The controls are rudimentary, the basic move right and left, move up and down and shoot to destroy obstacles. It is after all an arcade style game. The main character of the game is you, the player. Your main goal is to become free of the cycle of reincarnation on earth (the meaning of moksha) and reunite with God, which occurs after you have gone through all of the game levels and successfully answered the quizzes on Hindu teachings at the end of each level. Before you attempt the quizzes the teachings are presented after end of each level.
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3 comments:
Greetings of Peace.
I had observed that there is an element of violence in this Game and it is overshadowed by various Gurus and Deities. The main teaching in Hinduism dwells in Ahimsa - Non Violance. Why create such a shooting game? We can never reach Moksha by shooting, can we? The approach could be in a different manner to capture children and youths. each and every action we do... returns back to us. This is indeed is NOT a Hindu based game at all, sorry to say.
I will never recommend this game for children and youngters because this clearly defies the law of Karma. Hinduism supposed to be reflecting divine virtues and not Vikarma ( Bad actions ).
Appreciate if you could take this into consideration during the design aspect of the game.
Please accept my unlimited Godly love, respect & regards,
bro ravi.
Thanks for your comment Ravi, and point noted that we can never reach Moksha by shooting. However, because there is a dearth of any type of effort producing games that represents a deeper philosophical basis of Hinduism I am supporting the effort to at least teach some Hindu concepts through computer games. I see this as just an initial effort by the inventor and producer. I met the game creator Guna Kanthan personally and he is well aware Hinduism's bedrock principle of Ahimsa, but as he says, he wanted to start somewhere and he decided to follow gaming convention to begin with. What impressed me with Guna is that he is an amateur programmer and what he created took him a good part of two years of self-financed effort. His heart is in the right place, hopefully he gets enough financial support that he can eventually tweak the game to be more philosophically in tune with Hinduism in all aspects.
Good effort.
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