Co-creating a game with boys
Our formative research underscored the urgent need for early and complementary interventions tailored to adolescent boys in India. Boys often face societal pressures to provide, protect, and initiate intimacy—roles that allow little room for emotional exploration, vulnerability, or failure. As a result, many boys are socialized into emotional isolation, turning to mobile phones as companions, video games as outlets for control, and pornography as their primary model of intimacy.
Through co-design, we engage boys as partners in shaping alternative narratives—ones rooted in equity, empathy, and informed decision-making. Our goal is to foster healthier masculinities that advance both individual well-being and gender equity.
The Go Bro game promotes allyship with girls, supports aspirations, and cultivates boys’ demand for accurate information and services related to reproductive and adolescent health.


Boys crave the freedom to fail, cry, and break free from the provider role.
HDI Formative Research

Go Bro Game Play
Role play
Discover relationship challenges and visualize consequences
Minigames
Play to improve knowledge and shift norms
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Rewards
​​Decide and replay based on achievements and feedback
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Resources
Act on product, service links to improve real life outcomes
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Framework
Games provide a safe, private space to discover, practice, fail, and try again. Go Bro leverages the Social Norms Theory (SNT) to address norms by understanding peer dynamics and perceived normative behavior. The architecture provides opportunities to reflect on and deal with rejection, embarrassment, and failure without the bias that young men face. Our games are proven to improve knowledge and attitudes.
Reviews from Boys
I learnt what is important before sex, what might be harmful… In school we have only learnt about condoms, the copper IUD was new to me. Pritpal 16, Jaipur
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The storytelling of the game is good, and Vikram’s replies are also good. If a younger boy asks me anything, I would recommend this game. Even if he plays the game only once, he will gain some knowledge. Ayush 19, Jaipur
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If you don’t know anything about relationships, you can get guidance through this game. Niranjan 15, Jaipur
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After playing this I will do things differently next time… When we are ready to kiss, I will ask her, and won’t force her.
Bablu 18, Patna