Today we rarely see kids spend their time playing traditional games. Kids today prefer to spend their time at a gaming cafe, arcade, or their smartphone.

Traditional games are commonly played by kids who live in rural areas. As time pass, kids in rural also left traditional games behind. Do you want to know the popular Indonesian traditional games? See the full list below.

1. Congklak or Dakon

Congklak is commonly played by girls and almost every region plays this game. To play the game you will need a special board with 16 holes and 98 pieces of grain or clamshells.

Congklak is played by two players. The clamshells are placed equally into the 14 holes on the board. Players have to grab the clamshells from one of the holes and place it to every hole to the right side.

This traditional game is available in the mobile version and you can download it for free. Even if you can play the game on your smartphone, nothing beats the real-life interaction between the players.

2. Engkleng, Engklek, or Taplak Bumi

Who still remembers this traditional game called engklek, engkleng, or taplak bumi? There’s no special preparation or item needed to play the game since you can play it on the streets.

Playing the game is easy, the players can start by drawing boxes and a half-circle. The boxes are drawn to be in a T shape with 3 horizontal boxes, 1 vertical box, and 2 horizontal boxes.

Every player has to hop to the boxes with their leg and they cannot step on the line or out of the box. If the player falls down or step on the lines, then their turn ends.

3. Ular Naga

"Ular naga panjangnya bukan kepalang~" that’s the snippet of the song kids will sing while playing the traditional game ular naga. Ular naga is played by at least 7 kids, 2 of them will take the role of the guard while the rest try to walk past the guard.

The players only need to line up and hold the player in front of them on the soldiers and walk past the guards. When the song ends, the guard will grab one player the player that got caught is eliminated from the game.

4. Kite

When kids today choose to play games on their smartphones, kids from the past spend their time playing outside of their house. Flying a kite is one of the most popular traditional games in the past.

Even adults played the game with kids back then. There’s no need to spend a lot of money to buy a kite because the kite is made out of a bamboo stick tied with a thread glued on a piece of paper or plastic.

5. Hide and Seek

We rarely see kids today spend their time playing outside of their house until the afternoon. In the past, kids spend their time playing afternoon just for playing hide and seek with their friends.

Hide and seek is an easy game, gather the players that want to play the game, then set a rule about the hiding players, usually they can’t hide somewhere too far. Then pick one player as the seeker. The players who are hiding have to hide from the seeker and don’t let themself get caught.

6. Bentengan

Bentengan is usually played by kids during the break time at school. Bentengan is a game where the players have to be calculated and fast.

To play the game you will need two ‘bases’, sometimes kids will use a pole or a tree.  Each group consists of 4 to 8 players. The gameplay is straight forward. Guard the ‘benteng’ and make sure that players from other teams don’t touch it.

Every player has a task, some have to guard the ‘benteng’, some will chase and catch the member of another team, and some will try to capture the other team’s base. This is one of the best traditional games for exercising since every player has to run to guard the ‘benteng’ and catch other players.

7. Gobak Sodor, Hadang, atau Galaksin

The name of this traditional game depends on where you are from, but the gameplay and rules remain the same. Usually, the game is played on a badminton court or by drawing a 9x4m court and divide the court into 6 parts.

The purpose of this game is to build teamwork between the guards so the opponents will not get out of their position. Unfortunately, we won’t see kids play the game unless it’s during the Independence day.

That’s the list of the 7 traditional games that’s now forgotten by the Indonesian kids. Don’t forget to follow Dunia Games on Facebook and Instagram.

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