Instructables.com has called on users to invent new sports in their Horny Toad Invent-a-Sport Contest. Submissions closed on August 10, so you’ll have to wait till next year to submit the masterpiece you and your little brother have perfected over the years on the trampoline in your backyard. But they do need help selecting winners. Voting ends August 17, at which point apparently judging begins (ah, checks and balances).
They’ve got quite a slew of interesting submissions. Each submission includes information on how to play the sport so you can try it out for yourself before voting. There’s definitely some interesting lessons and ideas in here for street game designers.
Personally, I’ve played Chaam with the inventor Charles Amis and it rocks. It’s a fighting game crossed with dodgeball. You punch and kick a small soccer ball at your opponent to deplete their health all within the confines of a hot and sticky squash court. Fun, exhausting and just a little terrifying–what all good sports should be, right? Charles was part of the team behind Search Brigade at this years’ COaP festival.
There’s an interesting piece on one of Wired’s blogs about the Mystery Challenge at Defcon 16. It essentially equates to a puzzle hunt (Is that the best term for these? Is it more of a Puzzle Series as you don’t hunt for the puzzles, you just solve them to get the next one.) It gives some details about the rather hardcore puzzles and challenges involved. Could be good inspiration for you puzzle hunt designers.
The Mystery Challenge started out months before DefCon with the contest organizer, Lost, leaking hints on the DefCon forums. Once DefCon began, competing teams were given an envelope containing a riddle. After solving the riddle they were presented with a book full of cryptographic challenges. All the solutions equaled “X marks the spot.”
I’m pretty excited about Suspicious Package, a piece of interactive street theater being run this August in Brooklyn. While it’s not a game, it definitely has one of the qualities I’ve been looking for more of in street games, and that’s atmosphere and character. I love the idea of using the Zune to play nicely produced narrative videos. I’ve really been looking for a someone to design even a straight scavenger hunt with a strong narrative and story to draw in players.
As they describe it:
Told via provided Zune Media Players, the story unfolds as audience members (four at a time) are guided through their roles with both aural and visual cues. Video flashbacks and narrative voiceovers fill in your backstory while maps of locations and your dialogue are displayed on screen. Part theatrical experience, part live video game, part Williamsburg walking tour, Suspicious Package immerses its audience within the gritty chiaroscuro world of film noir, where not everything is black and white.
The COaP team is planning to check it out later this month. I’ll let you know what we make of it.
Tassos Stevens, one of the designers behind People Watching at Come Out & Play in Amsterdam is running a new game, BigBallBingo at the Shoreditch Ballpark in London on Sunday, August 24th. The game is a team version of bingo, where the numbers are generated by gigantic balls. It looks to be a lot of silly fun. I’d certainly check it out if I were on that side of the proverbial pond.
