Hıfzhane: turning memorisation and revision into a card game

Hıfzhane is an educational strategy card game I designed for students memorising the Qur’an. It started in 2025, and the alpha version is now being tested at the table. It does not try to replace that training; it sits beside it. The idea is to add a table, some conversation and a little competition to the long memorisation days of a boarding course. This post is about how I have tried to turn the rhythm of that memorisation routine into a card game.

Bringing the rhythm inside the game

The first decision in designing an educational game is whether it sits outside the routine a student already lives, or inside it. A game that sits outside becomes a break: fun, but loosely tied to the real work. A game that sits inside becomes a version of that work. Hıfzhane chooses to sit inside.

A memorisation course has a daily rhythm: a new page plus revision. The game’s basic structure copies that rhythm. The terms come from the traditional method, too. Ham cards carry newly memorised verses; Has cards carry the revision of older ones.

Borrowing the terms from the method has a practical benefit: part of learning the rules is done before anyone sits down. Instead of teaching students a new vocabulary, the game speaks in words they already use. For a ten-year-old, a rule with fewer new concepts is a rule they can start playing sooner.

New and old in one hand

Ham and Has cards are shuffled into the same hand. That may be the most important decision in the design.

There could have been two separate decks: new material first, then revision. But then revision becomes its own phase in the game, and phases can be put off. A mixed hand looks more like a real day on the course. You do not know which card is coming; one turn brings a new page, the next an older one. Revision stops being a separate chore and becomes part of the ordinary flow of play.

Open Devam cards on the table decide how the memory is tested. There are three ways. The player on your left starts a verse and you continue it. You guess the surah. Or you recite it. Succeed and the card stays in front of you.

This splits what is being tested, the card in your hand, from how it is tested, the Devam card. The same verse can be tested by continuation in one round and by naming the surah in another. Ten Devam cards can change the shape of the test without multiplying the content cards. It also matters that the Devam cards sit face up: everyone can see how the next test will work, and nobody is caught off guard.

The format where the player on your left starts the verse turns each test into a moment between two people. You are still part of the game when it is not your turn. In a large group, that is a small thread that keeps players from drifting off while they wait.

Meal cards and meaning

In memorisation, the words often come before their meaning. Meal cards are there to close that gap. They bring the meaning back into play with short questions about what a verse says.

How these cards enter the game is a design decision too. A Meal card is something you earn by passing a test: the player who succeeds keeps the card in front of them and gets to draw a Meal card. So the question about meaning arrives not as a penalty or extra homework, but as the step that follows success. A player who has just shown what they know by heart gets the chance to look at what a verse says. The game does not try to reverse the relationship between memorisation and meaning; it puts meaning next to memorisation.

A crowded table, two lengths

Hıfzhane is for students aged 10 to 16. It plays with 3 to 10 people, in teams when the group is large. Going up to ten players, with a team option, means a whole group can sit at one table without being split up.

Teams also keep turns from dragging at a crowded table. When ten people each play in turn, the wait gets long. Played in teams, turns come round faster and nobody spends long sitting out.

There are two modes: a quick 30-minute mode and a standard one-hour mode. They are two different answers to how the game fits into a day.

Hıfzhane is still in alpha, and the rules keep changing as they are tried at the table. In an educational game that is unavoidable: only the players can tell you whether a rule that makes sense on paper actually works.

You can find more about the game on the project page.