DENVER — Funmi Oyatogun, a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, is a young entrepreneur who created a game to celebrate Black culture.
It’s a guessing game she calls “Fill in the Black.”
“It celebrates Blackness. The entirety of it,” Oyatogun told 9NEWS in an interview from her home in Lagos, Nigeria. “I want people to understand how important it is that we are telling Black stories.”
The game comes with 300 cards. At the top of each one is an answer you want someone else to guess. The bottom lists five forbidden words or phrases you cannot use to help them.
For example, if you want someone to guess “Barack Obama,” you cannot say “first Black president” or “Malia and Sasha.” The clues are intended to make people think.
Oyatogun said the point of her game is not to win. It’s to learn.
Overall, the game focuses on Black stories, places, cultures and even inventions.
“I saw that there was a huge gap when it comes to content that was not just celebrating Blackness specifically, but that was celebrating many different forms of Blackness – many different Black cultures,” she said.
Oyatogun started a travel company in 2016 but decided to create the game when the COVID-19 pandemic put her career on pause. She worked with a team of more than 20 people to create the cards before the game went on sale in fall 2020.
The game is available for purchase in Nigeria, the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. You can buy it here.
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