Another popular board game is “Who Was It?”, in which players must search a castle for a magical ring that has been stolen by one of the castle’s inhabitants. Only the magical ring can save the kingdom from the evil wizard, who will reach the castle at 6 p.m. With the help of an interactive treasure chest, which also lets time run down and puts the players under pressure, the animals can be questioned as witnesses. Each animal demands a specific type of food that the players must find in the castle. Once they have found the food, they can give it to the animal, which then provides a clue in return, such as: “The thief is wearing black shoes.” In this way, the castle inhabitants who are not suspects can gradually be eliminated.
The game is made more challenging by a ghost that moves from room to room and chases the players back to the children’s bedroom, where they must start over, as well as by trapdoors, failed magic spells, and a thieving raven that steals food.
If the thief is caught before time runs out, the players can open the thief’s chest and the kingdom is saved.
Why is “Who Was It?” so well suited for physical education classes?
It requires a high level of cooperation and communication: players must coordinate with one another about which animals have already been questioned, in which rooms keys or food are hidden, and who can be ruled out as the thief. In addition, players do not compete against each other but work together toward a common goal: saving the kingdom. The time frame is particularly suitable for PE lessons, as the length of the game can be adjusted individually. The number of castle inhabitants and animals can also be adapted. In the original game, there are three different difficulty levels, which can be selected according to the students’ age and transferred to the real-life version of the game.
How the game could be adapted for physical education:
The animals or rooms of the castle are distributed across different stations in the gym or on the sports field. Simply running back and forth between the stations already gets the students moving. To perform actions such as searching, feeding, or asking, physical exercises must be completed. These could be detected by a Kinect sensor, which would then trigger the corresponding action in the interface. For this, each station would need a sensor and a device that enables interaction and provides audio feedback. At a central station, the food items are stored and the clues about the thief are collected.
