Inspired by the pressure she felt from her own family to submit to an arranged marriage, Arranged! is an unusual game designed by Nashra Balagamwala, a citizen of Pakistan who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design.

– Image from kickstarter.com

The culture of arranged marriages is still very prevalent in South-Asian societies with many girls forced into marrying someone their family chooses for them.  The husband is typically chosen on the basis of his wealth and social status, or sometimes, even as a business deal.   Most of these women cannot fight against the culture because they aren’t educated enough to be able to provide for themselves.  Arranged! masks the darkness of this topic, and provides a light-hearted platform for people discuss these issues surrounding arranged marriages.  The game involves a matchmaker (“Rishta Aunty”) who is trying to get the teenage girls married off to any and every boy she can find.  Meanwhile, the girls spend their time coming up with creative ways to avoid getting hitched for like talking about having a career, gaining weight, being seen in the mall with boys, and many other things that every other society would consider normal, but are seen as disgraceful in South Asian culture.  Eventually, Aunty comes across the Golden Boy, a green-eyed, light skinned, CEO of a business with a foreign passport. This is when the game dynamic switches around and it turns into a rat race to get married to the dreamy Mr. Right with the girls making their way towards Aunty by flaunting their talents.

– Image from kickstarter.com

Arranged! is currently the subject of a crowd-funding project on KickStarter which has already raised over $20,000, considerably more than the $6,000 goal.  Interested parties have a little less than two days left to join the  campaign, which ends on Thursday.