LEWISTON – Roll the dice. Move your disciple. Follow the path to Jesus.

Or suffer the sin bin.

In Victory, the sin bin is a sort of board game purgatory, where players are restrained from reaching their final destination: heaven.

Colleen Hamel suffered her punishment with a laugh, placing her orange sin card in front of her as a reminder to miss a turn. At her left, her son Michael moved his green disciples around, winning empowerment with a correctly answered bit of Bible trivia.

Yes, he knew Jonah was swallowed by a whale.

The game – part Sunday School class, part Parcheesi – is the invention of a Lewiston man, Gil Cote.

He says the the credit for the game doesn’t belong to him.

“I was called to put this game together,” said Cote, a carpenter with three children.

One night, he was inspired to pull out a Parcheesi game from among his kids’ toys. He began by renaming parts of the board.

That was 11 years ago. Until recently, it was a game played by his family and friends. Now he’s marketing it to all, potentially worldwide.

Since its early days, the game has gone through seven or eight incarnations. At first it was just a knockoff of the Milton-Bradley game, said to have begun by royalty in India.

However, Cote has since introduced trivia cards. He changed the number of pawns, which he calls “disciples,” from four to three. He altered the needed rolls of the dice and changed the pathway around the board.

“Each disciple goes through the cross and into heaven,” said Cote, describing the board’s design.

The result is a game which still reminds one of Parcheesi, but it’s a lot different.

Playing the Victory Game in the first floor of the Fellowship Church in Greene, the Hamels sounded like any other family playing an ordinary game.

They squabbled about the rules for a moment or two. And they laughed. The difference is in the details.

When Michael sat down, Colleen teased her 15-year-old son, saying, “Who’s Judas?” Then, she giggled, because he had the green players. “He’s Judas,” she said.

The family sometimes plays the game at home. Michael and his brother, Jacob, 10, introduce it to friends.

That’s what it was meant for.

“It’s a way to share our faith with friends,” Cote said. “We are sowing the seeds for His kingdom.”

With the help of area designers and printers, Cote has published 5,000 of his games. He’s selling them on the Internet: at his own www.victorygame.com, and on e-Bay.

His Web site carries the slogan, “More than just a game: Approved by God!” The site also has information about ordering the game for $22.95, plus $5.70 for shipping and handling. The laminated trivia cards are $3.50, plus $.60 shipping and handling. Trivia cards include “The Bread of Life,” “Daniel: The Story” and “Noah: The Story.”

Cote is also working with area churches, encouraging them to buy 10 games apiece and form tournaments among their parishioners.

He believes the Victory Game will take off. It will sell, he said, and become as popular as any board game there.

“God will not be No. 2,” he said.

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