There's a free video game that takes you back to Etruscan times with your smartphones

Who wants to visit Tuscany, Latium andUmbria in the time of the Etruscans by identifying with the inhabitants of these lands more than two thousand years ago? There is now a video game that allows you to do so: it is Mi Rasna - I am Etruscan, developed by Entertainment Game Apps, Ltd. (EGA) with the aim of enhancing the fascinating history of the Etruscans. The player will take on the role of an Etruscan magistrate who will have to manage an Etruscan city focusing on the development of the economy, agriculture, animal husbandry, construction, mining, and of course the production and trade of artifacts. All set in real cities, recreated in 2D graphics.

As anticipated, in addition to being fun and successful(Mi Rasna already has to its credit thousands of players who have downloaded from online stores), the video game also has interesting educational and popular purposes, and to best achieve them, EGA’s developers have collaborated with local museums and archaeological parks, which have made available not only the expertise of their staff but also pieces from their collections, which have been photographed and included in the game, and not only to allow for a faithful setting: in fact, they are featured in mini-quizzes that allow the player to earn coins to advance a level. For EGA, working with museums was an important item in the overall spending budget, since the developers are convinced that investments in historical research produce benefits for all involved.

And the scientific design, of course, was entrusted to anethruscologist, Francesca Pontani: "In the Mi Rasna project,“ said the scholar, ”as an archaeologist I was in charge of the historical-archaeological content, I took care of the historical verisimilitude and credibility of the game dynamics based on EGA’s needs, I also developed the contents of the multiple-choice quizzes. Having identified the cities to be included in the ’Dodecapolis’ group, I identified a number of ’minor’ cities chosen on the basis of their characteristics and strategic position, from a geographical, economic, commercial, frontier, and religious point of view. All the contents (the texts, the choice of the places to be included on the game map, the questions and answers of the quizzes) I have also thought and formulated them with the aim of making known, telling, enhancing the civilization of the Etruscans and the ’minor’ territory, those places less or not at all known. I strongly believe in a new frontier of communication of Cultural Heritage capable also of activating curiosity and historical, social and cultural knowledge of the territory where the archaeological sites are located. So a new type of communication that is also useful for the access, dissemination and promotion of local cultural identities, medium-small geographic entities located outside the large centers of the ’major’ circuit. All of this is to enhance their potential, fostering openness to a territorially broader and shared vision. Every element I have written I have designed to urge the player to learn while having fun: for example, even the wrong answers I have included have been formulated so that the player who will go searching for information to answer correctly, and thus earn points, will also discover other archaeological realities. All of this I thought of to create a virtuous mechanism of research and discovery of our cultural heritage."

The Mi Rasna development team is composed of Margo Lengua (editor), Francesco Sapio (senior programmer), Caterina Malisano (historical graphic designer), Clizia Brozzesi (illustrator), Maurizio Amoroso (EGA CEO), Alessandra Randazzo (press officer) and others who have participated in various capacities in this specific project. Explaining how the video game works is Maurizio Amoroso: "Mi Rasna is a strategy game where the player’s task is to make the cities of the Dodecapolis prosper so as to go through all the eras of the Etruscan world. In fact, the only way to gain experience in the game is to advance the cities, a process that will be possible if the player can meet the requirements of each individual city. Each city placed on the map, in fact, will have its own peculiarity in terms of production, resources and the type of resource it produces. The task of the smaller cities will be to supply resources to the larger cities through a commercial transportation system that will be managed by the player. In order to make resources it will be necessary to unlock ’skills’ in each city and, subsequently, to build in the same city the structure that will create that resource: ’Agriculture’ will unlock the creation of ’Farms’ and ’Breeding Farms’ of animals that will produce milk, meat, grain. The process of finding resources, in order to progress, will be tested by two main factors. The first will be ’Time,’ i.e., a percentage of the resources produced that will deteriorate with the passage of time, while the second will be the player’s enemies: bandits, Italics and Romans who, by plundering the cities, will take away the player’s needed resources. The player, thanks to the population, will be able to liberate the cities and form armies to face the enemies and re-employ the lost resources, taking care, however, of the men available. The growth of cities will make more men available to fight. A system of quests will then allow the player to gain honor at individual cities (crucial at the ’Fanum Voltumnae’ gathering) and thus gain the consent of other allied cities. A system of divinations, possible every 30 moon phases (about 40 minutes), will allow the player to question the gods about how certain factors will go in the future of the game. Depending on the answer, the game will change vital parameters for a given period. Currency will be the fundamental element of the strategy game. Any activity will have a cost in currency. The player’s use of questions about Etruscan history or his skill in solving mini-games about the artifacts that museums have given relative to that city will allow the player to earn much-needed coins. To compete with each other, players will have a ranking whose ranks will be the roles in Etruscan society; the highest, of course, will be the Lucumone."

The player has a range of cities at his disposal. For Tuscany: Arezzo, Artimino, Cetona, Chianciano Terme, Chiusi, Cortona, Fiesole, Elba Island, Massa Marittima, Murlo, Orbetello, Pitigliano, Populonia, Roselle, Sarteano, Saturnia, Sovana, Talamone, Vetulonia, Volterra. For Lazio: Acquarossa, Bisenzio, Bolsena, Bomarzo, Caere, Castel d’Asso, Cerveteri, Faleri Novii, Gravisca, Norchia, Orte, Pyrgi, Regisvilla, Rofalco, San Giuliano, Santa Marinella, Sutri, Tarquinia, Tolfa, Tuscania, Veio, Vulci. For Umbria: Perugia, Orvieto, Todi.

The game can be downloaded for free from Google Play, where it already has 215 reviews, almost all of them excellent.

There's a free video game that takes you back to Etruscan times with your smartphones

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