Charles Kong Soo

What hap­pens when you mix the fun of board games and the ben­e­fits of ex­er­cise? You get BoardGains, an in­no­v­a­tive fu­sion of the two.

The fit­ness board game was cre­at­ed by Trinidad-born Er­ic Mathu­ra, 31, a mar­ket­ing and events man­ag­er/per­son­al train­er at Ha­bit­u­al Fit­ness in Mis­sis­sauga, Cana­da.

When the gym was closed dur­ing the lock­down in March 2020, he used the cri­sis and turned it in­to an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op his con­cept for the game and trans­form it in­to re­al­i­ty.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian Mathu­ra said “I dis­cov­ered the pow­er of board games to unite peo­ple around fit­ness while work­ing at the gym.

“In the past eight years at Ha­bit­u­al Fit­ness, I’ve cre­at­ed lots of in­no­v­a­tive fit­ness events bring­ing fun to fit­ness.

“One of those was a spe­cial­ty boot­camp event called “Board Games Boot­camp” in 2016, which ap­plied a fit­ness twist to four dif­fer­ent board game con­cepts.

“The feed­back was great, every­one loved the event and it was a suc­cess.”

He said it plant­ed a seed in his mind; what if one of those con­cepts could be turned in­to a re­al game?

Mathu­ra, who has a BSc in Ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy at York Uni­ver­si­ty replied the mo­ment he saw the ex­cite­ment, sense of com­mu­ni­ty, com­pe­ti­tion, and the mo­ti­va­tion his Board Games Boot­camp brought, he knew he was on­to some­thing spe­cial.

He dou­bled down on that event and took that fit­ness white­board he had cre­at­ed and kept de­vel­op­ing the game over the years.

Mathu­ra, whose fam­i­ly is from Gand­hi Vil­lage, Debe fur­ther added that he con­tin­ued to de­vel­op, test, and fine tune dif­fer­ent it­er­a­tions of the game with dif­fer­ent groups of friends in­di­vid­u­als through­out the years.

He said the names of the game al­so changed over time, from Fit­ness Mo­nop­oly to Fi­topoly in Sep­tem­ber 2018 to Pump It Up in June 2019.

Mathu­ra dis­closed that it was the win­ner of one of his events, Lala, the prize was a chef to come to her house and cook her a pri­vate din­ner asked him where she can buy the game and he told her that he made it.

Mathu­ra re­spond­ed that a light bulb went off in his head and he should make it in­to an ac­tu­al board game.

He re­vealed that the name came about from a teenag­er in one of his boot camps who took a pho­to­graph of the game and post­ed it on Snapchat call­ing it “board gains.”

Mathu­ra said when Cana­da was in lock­down in March 2020, while fur­loughed due to his gym em­ploy­er tem­porar­i­ly clos­ing its doors he used his time to fin­ish the game’s de­vel­op­ment.

Af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly fund­ing his Kick­starter crowd fund­ing cam­paign on Nov 11, 2020, he was able to source a man­u­fac­tur­er to bring BoardGains to the hands of peo­ple every­where.

Mathu­ra opined that the tim­ing was per­fect as more peo­ple were stay­ing at home and turn­ing to home fit­ness ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

He shared that his vi­sion in cre­at­ing BoardGains was to pro­vide a fresh new way to pro­mote fam­i­ly fit­ness and friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion in any group of friends whether play­ing at the park or beach. Mathu­ra added that the game was ver­sa­tile enough to be used by per­son­al train­ers to teach their fit­ness class­es and can even be played so­lo at home to get a work­out in.

He em­pha­sised that the main goal was to make fit­ness fun and help all peo­ple achieve last­ing health and well­ness.

Mathu­ra ex­plained the game in­volves in­di­vid­ual play­ers or teams rolling the dice, mov­ing their game pieces, com­plet­ing phys­i­cal ex­er­cis­es, and then col­lect­ing “gains” as they com­plete a lap around the board.

He stat­ed the ob­jec­tive was to col­lect a set num­ber of gains be­fore any­one else or col­lect the most gains in a set amount of time. Play­ers can gain ad­van­tages or are hit with dis­ad­van­tages by col­lect­ing “lucky play cards.”

Mathu­ra stressed that the board game was fam­i­ly-friend­ly, with sim­ple, easy-to-fol­low rules, it can be played in ap­prox­i­mate­ly one hour in any set­ting, with no spe­cial equip­ment re­quired.

He said be­sides Cana­da and the US, ship­ping had be­gun to cus­tomers world­wide to di­verse coun­tries such as Aus­tralia, Ger­many, Bel­gium, Aus­tria, UK, New Zealand, South Africa, the Nether­lands, In­done­sia and Spain.

When asked if he had any words of en­cour­age­ment and ad­vice for some­one who want­ed to bring a board game to mar­ket or a small busi­ness, Mathu­ra replied to just go for it; don’t over-think about ideas, if you have an idea, run with it. Make a plan and ex­e­cute.

Mathu­ra will be com­ing to Trinidad for a BoardGains pop-up event ear­ly in the new year.