Thursday March 28th, 2024
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'Bee3' is the Authentically Egyptian Board Game Based on the Everyday Hustle in Cairo

As the debut game of the newly-launched Crit Gaming company, ‘Bee3’ is a fun take on the world of business in Egypt, recreating Cairo’s controlled chaos with beautifully drawn cards and creative game mechanics.

Staff Writer

'Bee3' is the Authentically Egyptian Board Game Based on the Everyday Hustle in Cairo

From tawla to tarneeb, table games are pastimes so quintessentially Egyptian they are practically a rite of passage. Ahwa culture isn’t just for middle-aged uncles seated around the street corner - and neither, for that matter, is the business world. With young entrepreneurs rising among Egypt's millennials (and even some members of Gen-Z!), it seems just about everyone is familiar with the everyday hustle, and the controlled chaos that comes to accompany it. Which ended up being the perfect inspiration for 'Bee3', a board game from the newly-launched Crit Gaming.


“In the local scene you basically either buy a loosely Egyptianized version of a really old game, or you wait for people to go abroad and get international games," Taher Medhat, cofounder of Crit Gaming, told CairoScene. "There's a lot of Egyptians who like games and we have a really prominent ahwa and Sahel culture around them, but not enough new entries.”


To fill that need for an authentically Egyptian board game, without just painting a coat of Egyptianization on games like Monopoly or Candy Kingdom or whatever, three friends - Medhat, Albert Tadros and Ali Salama - launched their new company with Bee3, a board game based on one of the pillars of Egypt's society - the unique way we talk money. “This is a game about building classic Egyptian businesses and being crafty with how you handle other players,” Medhat said. Take for example the Mo5alasaty character, which can steal a business from your opponent. Then your Baltagy character, who can defend your businesses to protect you from retaliation attempts.


“Everything in the game, from the characters, to the districts, to the style of negotiation, to the way you get random amounts of money instead of fixed ones, all ties into this controlled chaos that we love about Cairo,” Medhat said. The game tries to bridge those gaps and make games accessible to every player, whether they’re a strategy geek or just a social gamer.


Crit Gaming plans on releasing a wide variety of games in different genres in the future, with many exciting plans for 2021. Bee3 is currently available on critgaming.zammit.shop to be delivered to your door within just 48 hours.