PLAYCE: Palestinian Games on the Go

Designers: Mai Al Zeer, Majd Abu Madi, Mustafa Butma,
Artisan: Issa Nassar

PLAYCE is a Palestinian brand that designs and crafts games on the go, sitting between PLAY and PLACE. PLAY is the curiosity and adventure that happen through play, transforming Palestinian craftsmanship and cultural heritage into active, everyday experiences. PLACE is Palestine; the place we belong to and the place we carry with us wherever we go. Designed and crafted by Palestinians, each game is inspired by a Palestinian landscape, memory, or narrative, carrying a story to tell. PLAYCE ON THE GO means the games are made to travel. They are lightweight, compact, and designed to be played wherever the journey takes you.

That is what makes PLAYCE both a piece of Palestine and a companion on the go. 

OPEN THE BOX | First Collection

OPEN THE BOX is PLAYCE’s first collection: three familiar games reimagined as compact olive-wood objects made for play on the go.
Each game begins with a recognizable format and reinterprets it through a Palestinian place, memory, or cultural reference. The result is contemporary in use and form, yet rooted in Palestine.

Hollow / Holy Chess on the Go: From the Holy Land, hollowed chess pieces move and maneuver across the small territory of the chessboard. Their abstract geometric forms reinterpret the familiar chess set through a contemporary architectural language, while integrated pegs keep the pieces stable during play on the move. Hollow refers to the internal void of each piece, while Holy connects the game to Palestine as a place of origin, memory, and belonging.

Hollow / Holy echoes the book Hollow Land, drawing on the spatial fragmentation of Palestine through  architecture, planning, geopolitics and control. These themes resonate with chess as a game of movement and territory, alongside the “hollow/holy” wordplay.     

Saru Building Blocks: Inspired by the cypress-tree motif in Palestinian tatreez, Saru transforms embroidery into a three-dimensional language of modular building blocks. The pieces can be assembled, rearranged, and reimagined through play, moving tatreez beyond a fixed surface pattern and into an open-ended system of construction and spatial exploration.

Sataf Color Palette: Inspired by the landscape of the depopulated Palestinian village of Sataf, this compact watercolor palette carries the colors and memory of its landscape on the go. Crafted as a travelling tool, it translates tones of vegetation, earth, stone, and water into a palette that can move with the artist and generate new landscapes elsewhere.

Together, the three games explore the relationship between movement and rootedness through portable forms of play and place that can be carried, shared, and reimagined.