Cuenta Cuentos: A Co-designed Board Game for Preserving the Language of the Comcaac

Cuenta Cuentos is a co-designed analog board game developed to support the preservation and intergenerational transmission of Cmiique Iitom, the ancestral language of the Comcáac (Seri) people of Sonora, Mexico. The paper presents the project as a case study in game-based learning and Radical Participatory Design, arguing that games grounded in ethical co-design and local knowledge can serve as culturally meaningful tools for language revitalization. The project emerged from a sixth-semester design course at Tecnológico de Monterrey and involved students, educators, linguists, children, and community members from Punta Chueca.

The authors situate the work within a context of language vitality concerns. The language is spoken by roughly 1,000 people, and recent studies describe subtractive bilingualism among younger generations, with growing numbers of children who are passive speakers or non-speakers. The methodology combined two field visits, qualitative interviews and informal conversations with children, teachers, and language experts, playtesting with children around eight years old, and a high-fidelity prototype tested with two age groups at a primary school in Hermosillo. Two play-based encounters, a mangrove-feather toy and a classroom activity called hapapl!, are described as sources of design insight, showing that play can activate curiosity and cultural meaning before formal instruction.

The final game includes 32 illustrated 3D haptic cards that serve as narrative prompts for two to ten players aged eight and above, supporting both oral collective storytelling and individual written stories. The authors report positive responses from children, particularly to the storytelling component, but acknowledge that long-term validation within the Comcáac community remains pending. The paper frames the prototypes' eventual return to local educators as the project's most important stage.