The Stone Challenge: Turning Constraints into Value
Handed a group of first-year engineering students a pile of worthless stones and two hours. They walked out with tabletop games.
There’s a comfortable myth in design: that good work needs good resources, the right software, a healthy budget, and enough time to get everything perfect. Yesterday, a room full of first-year engineering students from Kathmandu University got none of that. What they got instead was a handful of ordinary stones, some chart paper, and a clock already ticking.
The session was The Stone Challenge, an orientation-style game hosted by the Design Lab and put together by Dr. Pratisthit Lal Shrestha, our Lead Principal Investigator. The task was simple to say and hard to do. Take these zero-value stones and turn them into a complete, marketable tabletop game, from the first rough idea all the way to a sales pitch, before the two hours ran out.
Because, as the brief reminded everyone, design isn’t decoration. It’s the act of turning constraints into something people actually want.
No room to hide
The constraints did most of the teaching. Two hours, no extensions. Materials limited to stones, chart paper, markers, scissors, glue, and tape, with nothing digital or electronic allowed. And then the rule that made everyone pause: the game’s manual had to explain itself completely. No hovering nearby, no “oh, and one more thing.” If a stranger couldn’t pick up the guide and start playing, the game didn’t work.
That single rule quietly changed how the students thought. Suddenly they weren’t designing for themselves. They were designing for someone they would never meet.
More than a game
And it wasn’t only a game they had to make. By the end of the afternoon, each team needed a real product sitting on the table: decorated stone playing pieces and a paper board, a user guide that could walk a first-time player through the goal, setup, and rules, packaging in the form of a branded box or pouch folded from chart paper, and a 60-second pitch to sell the whole thing to a room full of buyers.
Game design, writing, branding, and selling, all of it in one sitting.
How the afternoon unfolded
It started slowly, the way these things do. A short brief, then teams fanning out to gather their stones and argue over a theme. The long middle stretch was where the room really came alive: prototyping, scribbling rules, tearing them up, and trying again. Partway through, teams swapped their half-built games with a neighbouring table to playtest, and nothing humbles a confident rulebook quite like watching someone else get stuck on step two.
Then came the scramble. Boxes finished, pitches rehearsed under breath, and finally the exhibition: seven 60-second pitches, back to back, with everyone voting for the games they would actually want to take home.
The results
The final standings came down to that peer vote:
| Team | Score |
|---|---|
| Captain Stone | 2.5 |
| Stony Tellers | 2.4 |
| Roulette | 2.3 |
| Dhunga Mathi Kamila | 2.3 |
| Rolling Stone | 2.1 |
| Shoot the Target | 1.7 |
| Milky Bar | 1.6 |
Congratulations to Team Captain Stone for coming out on top, and honestly, to every team that turned a pile of rocks into something people wanted to play.
What they took home
Nobody left with unlimited resources, and that was the whole point. A short clock forces you to commit. A tight material list forces sharper choices. A “no explaining allowed” rule forces you to really see the person on the other end.
That’s the lesson we wanted these first-year engineers to feel in their hands rather than just hear in a lecture. Design isn’t about having everything you need. It’s about making something worth having out of the little you’re given. Yesterday, that was a handful of stones, and it turned out to be more than enough.
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