Kolejka (game)

Kolejka is a board game designed by Karol Madaj and published in February 2011 by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, a state historical institution rather than a commercial game publisher. Intended for two to five players over roughly an hour, the game recreates the experience of shopping under Poland's communist-era shortage economy between 1945 and 1989, with players sending family members to queue outside shops for scarce goods such as meat, shoes or toilet paper, only to find empty shelves, connections that let them jump the queue, or store closures that send everyone home empty-handed. Its title means queue or line in Polish, referencing the long waiting lines that characterized everyday shopping under the planned economy. The game was created explicitly as an educational tool aimed at teaching younger Poles, who did not live through the period, about the everyday hardships of communist-era rationing, and its board and mechanics have drawn comparisons to the widely known game Monopoly despite its very different, historically grounded subject matter.