What is Slovarica
Slovarica is a musical tabletop game built around the human voice. 248 tiles. Hundreds of sounds. No winners, no losers, but the shared fun of creative exchange between people even if they speak different languages.
The game
Each tile tells a story. Each session is unrepeatable.
Slovarica is the very first tablecloth game designed for collective singing. It creates a friendly dynamic space for exploring voice and developing musical creativity while learning the rich phonetic heritage of the Balkans.
The name of the game derives from Serbo-Croatian 'slovo' which means 'letter'. Slovarica comprises more than 200 sounds, including letters from more than 10 alphabets. It fuses international phonemes, vocal sounds and noises (e.g. whistling, hissing, tutting, etc.) that celebrate human ability to sing.
The game map represents a northern part of the Balkan region that contains the Danube, Belgrade, Budapest, and other local cities, Carpathian mountains and the Alps, lake Balaton, several seas, and more. Each type of landscape provides a unique range of sounds.
Online, it becomes a interactive digital platform: up to twenty players move across the same map in real time, their choices layering into something none of them planned. Offline, it is a collective instrument, a guidebook, a world to learn and share.
Slovarica was originally invented by Boris Lesnoy as a way to nurture the sense of global kinship and bring people closer across borders and cultures.
See it in action
Mankind's first musical performance
couldn't have been anything other
than a free improvisation. Derek Bailey
Mission
Slovarica treats the human voice as the most democratic instrument there is. No training required. No hardware to buy. Your voice is already the game.
Drawing from the international phonetic heritage, Slovarica turns the raw material of language — its clicks, fricatives, resonances — into a playable sonic landscape.
Every mode is built around listening and responding. The game session has no goal except the music that emerges.
Slovarica Southern is in development. New landscapes, new sounds, new myths — the game is designed to gather around despite borders.
Slovarica is used in music education, acting workshops, choral warm-ups and contemporary art contexts. If you work with groups and voices, there is a version of this game for you.