From dusty Ludo to global dreams: Limpopo man invents Dicato72 board game

He has vivid memories of himself and his childhood friends playing Ludo in Ga-Matlapa, a village in Ga-Mashashane, Limpopo.

Lesiba Papo and his buddies would huddle up, take turns rolling the dice and race to finish first.

In their case, they drew it on the ground or on cardboard because they couldn’t afford to buy the actual game.

Decades later, the boy who played Ludo in the dust is now the creator of his own board game, Dicato72.

A fusion of classic games

“Dicato is an acronym for dice, cards and tokens. It fuses elements of ludo and casino games, and they are both stitched together by rock, paper, scissors,” Papo tells us.

“The number 72 represents the blocks players have to move through before getting to the finish line,” the 35-year-old adds.

The two-player game challenges opponents to out-move each other and get past the 72^nd block first, or to have the furthest token by the time the deck of 54 cards runs out.

They first roll the dice, have a face-off with the cards, which carry either a rock, paper or scissors symbol, and advance depending on who has the advantage.

“I’d like to think the game is good for mental stimulation, especially for kids, for their mental development, and just to harness their critical skills.

“It’s also good for adults who are maybe faced with work pressure and want to unwind. It’s basically for the whole family to have fun and relax.”

The makings of Dicato72

Now based in Pretoria East, Papo began exploring the idea of designing a game between 2021 and 2022, and says it is influenced by the games he played growing up.

“I came up with the concept because we used to play a lot of Ludo and casino games separately growing up. So, I thought of how I could fuse the two so that you don’t have to play the games separately, and adding rock, paper, scissors felt like a brilliant idea,” he says.

Without any prior background in game design, he utilised online resources to bring his imagined idea to visual reality.

Papo did this while also juggling his career as a botanist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

Bringing the concept to life has mostly been a one-man show for the University of Johannesburg Master’s degree graduate.

Big dreams

However, he says he is now tapping into his network and roping in professionals to make it available digitally.

He has big dreams for Dicato72.

“I’d like to see it being distributed globally just like chess and 30 Seconds, being played in many households, in schools as well as in corporate,” Papo says.

“I’d also like to see the game being recognised by Mind Sports South Africa, both as a physical board and in esports for mobile and web applications.”