From a colorful mask crafted by hundreds of hands to ancient-inspired board games—the Alos Center for Informal Education and Cultural Activity turns play into a bridge between people and eras, between science and art, between knowledge and experience.

How much can you learn from a game?

A few figures gather around a game board. Eyes are focused, and fingers sliding the game pieces hesitate only briefly. One player smirks, another struggles to contain their impatience, and a third weighs their move with the seriousness of a general. The scene could be from a city park last weekend—or a Roman camp centuries ago.

People have played games for thousands of years. We play not just for fun, but for the sense of connection and understanding it brings. There is something deeply human in play—a language that needs no translation. It speaks across ages, borders, and generations.

No wonder each game feels like a world of its own. Sometimes you’re competing, other times you’re teaming up, but you’re always experiencing something real. You’re thinking, testing, trying. Games teach us not just rules but strategy, patience, and new ways to perceive the world. Beneath the surface of play lies a kind of learning that stays with you long after the game is over.

From Roman soldiers to kids today

The Alos Center harnesses the power of play to make learning exciting, meaningful, and memorable. Their games don’t just entertain; they spark curiosity, tell stories, fire up the imagination, and bring knowledge to life.

One of their most iconic games is Alquerque, a strategic board game found carved in stone in Bulgaria’s medieval capital Pliska, yet played as far back as ancient Egypt and Rome and later in the Arab world. “Just as Roman soldiers played 2,000 years ago in Novae [today’s Svishtov, ed.], our children play at home now,” says Rositsa Marinova, co-founder of Alos.

To her, the fact that one game can resonate across such different lives and centuries proves that people everywhere, in every era, crave the same things: connection, understanding, shared experience.

Alos games are historically accurate, made from natural materials, and designed with attention to detail. But they’re more than just beautifully crafted products. Each of the 13 board games they’ve created is an opportunity—a way to spark a teacher’s creativity, to bring a smile to a friend on the beach, or to draw in a child who usually finds textbooks boring. And, at the same time, to support Alos’s mission.

For Rositsa and her team, games are a way to reach places textbooks can’t—the imagination, emotions, personal meaning. They design games to light a spark in every learner—not with pressure, but with experiences that stay with you. Because when learning is felt, it lasts.

Where art meets education

Games are only part of Alos’s broader vision. For over 23 years, Rositsa and her team—educators, artists, and cultural experts—have worked with schools, museums, universities, and communities across Bulgaria to design learning experiences that are engaging, hands-on, and personal. They’ve collaborated with 23 museums, partnered with dozens of schools, and reached thousands of learners. They turn classrooms into creative spaces, museums into playgrounds of discovery, and public squares into shared zones of exploration. They lead art workshops, design installations, and create resources that help high school and university students and teachers learn in ways that are joyful and lasting.

Among their most loved events are workshops at the Sofia Zoo, where children learn about animals and ecosystems, reuse materials from everyday life, and discover ways to care for the planet. Alos also creates cause-driven museum games—like Fly with the Birds at the National Museum of Natural History and Winged Journey at the Blagoevgrad History Museum, where players become migratory birds navigating challenges across Bulgaria, or Mission Mars at the Aviation Museum in Krumovo, where they steer a rocket through cosmic obstacles.

Alos regularly works with students across Bulgaria to reimagine traditions—from crafting modern interpretations of ancient Bulgarian Kukeri masks to creating colorful installations for the Plum Festival in the mountain town of Troyan.

The topics they explore range from cultural heritage to sustainability, but the approach is always the same: knowledge that you can touch, draw, or play with is knowledge that sticks. Thousands of kids and teens around the country have already discovered this for themselves.

From mission to model

For Alos, games have never been the goal—they’re the means to sustain their mission. Over the years, the team has turned their best educational content into products—games, learning kits, and books—that not only share knowledge but help fund their growing work with children and youth.

Many of these creations are available in their online store or on Dar Pazar—a Bulgarian platform that brings together handcrafted, mission-driven items from social enterprises. Buying a game means supporting the future: a new workshop, a new installation, a new educational tournament, a new opportunity for a child to explore the world through art.

Experiences that connect

A game isn’t just a way to learn something new. It’s a way to touch history, to create something with your hands, to laugh with a stranger—and, suddenly, not be strangers anymore. Like when teens tie pom-poms together to weave a bright Kukeri mask. Or when parents and kids paint window stickers to save birds from collisions. Or when a classroom transforms 28,000 bottle caps into a mosaic that tells a story.

These are the moments when games reveal their greatest power—to connect. To teach without pressure. To leave a mark. That’s what Alos games do. And maybe that’s why, once you play them, you’ll want to share them with someone else.