Trivandrum UNO NO Mercy Tournament 2025 - How we hosted the biggest UNO tournament.

A collection of participants for our Tournament

Imagine 200 people, in 22 locations all around Trivandrum joining in together in the spirit of friendship, community and just plain having a fun game of UNO. That's what happened on 11th of October when we hosted the qualifiers of our Trivandrum UNO No Mercy Tournament.

Qualifiers at Manaveeyam

It all started with a dream. The Trust’s first event had to be big. It had to involve a lot of people and they had to have fun. We wanted a game that was so popular that we wouldn't need to explain what it was, and a game easy enough to explain that even beginners could jump in and have fun, so just any board game wouldn't cut it. We also wanted everyone in Trivandrum to participate in it. So hosting in one location wouldn't be enough.

UNO was the obvious choice for the game. Easy, accessible and popular, however we wanted to do something different, bring in a new game to the cultural landscape as PlayFest has been doing for the past 2 years. Out of all the variations of UNO, We landed on No Mercy, a variation of the game that was more ruthless, more chaotic and more fun.

To bring the Tournament to the whole of the city, we knew we had to collaborate with multiple venue partners all across Trivandrum. A small request from our side, a small table, for one hour on a Saturday. No payments, just goodwill. Wonderful venue partners across the city answered our requests with boundless enthusiasm. 

From Neyyantinkara to Kazhakottam, we partnered with 22 venues to host our events. The stages had been set, the decks of uno packs delivered, yet anxiety struck our hearts as the numbers came into clear view.

Location Partners

• Manaveeyam Veedhi

• Casa Mi Amor

• Sijis Pizza Street

• Savour Street Cafe

• Ambrosia

• Sijis Pizza Street

• Grand Auto Detailing Studio

• THE PENTA DEN by Pandava’s

• Style Plus

• Arabica Fried Chicken

• Premier Office Equipment Co

• Thalikunnil - Godrej Interio

• Barbecue Space

• Under the Mangosteen

• Jack Constructions

• Urban Space Restaurant By Barbecue Space

• Barbecue Space

• Premier Office Equipment Co

• Kappiness Mental Health Cafe

• Entree

• Eve's Coffee

• Pakida
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Making people come together is the main goal of PlayFest, and during our first major event, it was our most intriguing challenge. Bringing people together to play the game, training volunteers to host it.

We’d need to introduce this tournament to a lot of people - a promotional campaign that was spread across all major social media platforms, public spaces, events and companies. That meant a lot of high quality content that needed to be produced and shared. Creating high quality content was the first challenge, one easily solved by the group of creative members within the community putting their cameras, laptops and brains together. Being a relatively new phenomenon, PlayFest lacked the social media pulling power to get our catalogue of content out there.

That's where our media partners came in full effect, What’s Happening Trivandrum & Where in TVM. Sharing out content wide and connecting us with social media pages across the Trivandrum media landscape.

A few of our volunteers

What turned this tournament from a dream to a reality was the presence and work of a lot of people, Even with 22 location partners set up, hosting games there required people who knew the game in and out, able to explain the rules and manage the table. Our Volunteers, made up of new faces recruited via communities and our regulars who have been a part of the trust even as we were just a few communities.

Months of Planning, Weeks of Training Volunteers and running ads, Days stressed over tickets later, we reached that fateful evening of October 11 with most locations sold out and 200 participants itching to play the game, and at 6pm, the largest UNO championship the city has ever seen erupted across Trivandrum. Out of these 22 locations, emerged a winner each. They came together in the morning after to decide once and for all who would be titled “UNO No Mercy Champion Trivandrum”.

Fierce battles raged across 4 tables at Eve’s Coffee Anayara, and everything came down to one game.+4s, reverses, Roulettes' and +10s later, The most anticipated game of UNO came to an end. But the story of PlayFest does not. New events and tournaments will follow.