the iglympics

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 6:53pm

The interesting games lab celebrates sports as part of the Watershed’s Let the Games Begin season. We are holding a mini Olympics of street games, interesting sports and mucking about.

Korean Lazer BallHosted by the Watershed, June’s iglab will bring you some of the best street games and pervasive games to have been developed around the the theme of sports. Heading the Line up will be a mini tournament of Korean Lazer Ball. Like some kind of sport from a sci fi future, Korean Lazer Ball pits two teams of lazer gladiators against each other leaving them to shine bounce and dodge their way to the top of the league.  We will invite the current world champion teams to defend their title against all-comers.

We wil also be playing Circle Rules Football the winner of the best new sport ant this years Come out and Play festival in NYC: English Judo -  a game of compettitive ettiquette : Telephone Tennis - get ready ro serve at the speed of a ring tone : Olympic sparkler torch relays - keep the sparkle flame alive : and Last but not least the most truly olympic sport of all - Cake Hunting… Need we say more!

WE look forward to seeing you. Olympic outfits at the ready Let the games begin.

Mayfest

Friday, May 08th, 2009 2:28pm

mayfest

im pretty sure lots of you interested in iglab events will be pretty interested in some of the work on at this years mayfest.

Mayfest is Bristol’s festival of physical, visual and experimental theatre. Here is a link to their site for full details. Several of theArtists involved will already be familiar to anyone who has been to iglab before, inc Duncan Speakman with his piece My world is empty without you.

judas

We [ Simon]  will be running Hurt our new game alongside this years mayfest.

“14th May 8.00pm Bristol They have come looking for you and they know the truth. Hurt is an escape game. Can you get out? You will be sent the start time and location the day of the game”.

Hurt is a cross town escape game. It looks at presonal freedoms, group loyalty, and the role of the police in a civil society.

sign up’s are now open.

Hurt test 30-04-09

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 5:01pm

shields

“They have come looking for you and they know the truth. Hurt is an escape game. Can you get out?”

We are running a test of our latest city sized street game “Hurt” tomorrow night and wondered if you’d like to come and play with us.
the game test will feature our new game engine and an entirely new means of communicating and playing across the city.
the test is free and will kick off from a secret location at 8pm tomorrow eve. The game will last about 90 mins. Spilling out across the city into an exciting escape game Hurt will challenge your wits and your morals…

sign in for free at
http://play.simongames.co.uk/

iglab 8 - blocking the city with police tape and ending the night in the cells

Thursday, April 02nd, 2009 9:02pm

dans teeth

It was iglab 8 last night and it was good.

Mr  Speakman  tried out a new game of his called Double negative that involved running through the streets trailing lengths of  barrier tape. The sight was seen by some bystanders  and described to a blind friend as “mad people running with police tape” and then as “people  making rectangles and triangles from the tape as they ran”. This we liked.

The game was a kind of running puzzle game.  Two teams were divided into blockers and runners. They then proceeded to try and block the passage of each others runners between an agreed start and end point. Red runners couldn’t pass the red tape, yellow runners couldn’t pass the red tape.  You could unblock a blocked route by blocking it with the same number of opposite colour tapes.

Result - Sprint race with furling ribbons. A beautiful sight even for those who cant see it.

The rest of the eve was spent in the Cells at bridewell by kind permission of Art Space Life Space. There we played two more games, Midnight Tennis(we renamed this Monsters Ball) and Monochrome.

Monochrome was first up. The game saw red and green teams pitted against each other  in a perceptually limited sneak in the dark. Red Teams wore red visors and carried dim red lights invisible to the green team who wore green visors and carried equally dim green lights. This enabled players to sneak through the blackness with a light that was invisible to their opponents. A neat trick but the aim was simple enough. each player had a word taped to their chest and back like “ice “, “fire”, “cave”, “hole”. points would be scored for every opponents word you could find in the blackness within a 180 sec round.

Tom Melamed Brought the balls and set up his game Monsters ball in which the Monster Moth Men listening to Morresy were loosed into the Darkness (total blackout) of the cells. Players then had to navigate the darkness and find the three pieces of a riddle that had been chalked out somewhere in the gloom. To aid them on their way they could bash their monster ball and it would flash with awkward red lights for  a few seconds. in this time you could see alittle but the moth men would also see the light and start closing in on you. If they could tap you before the light went out you went out.

Pretty creepy, as I walked through the blackness  i bumped in to another player who was clearly hiding in a cell “your not  a moth man are you??”. Luckily not, for him…

Thanks to everyone who came along last night more great games will be on soon. In fact REALLY soon. Like next week…

Watch this space for log in details for another Citywide Escape Effort as CARGO gets its second test outing.

../simon J

The interesting games lab eight

Thursday, March 26th, 2009 3:47pm

throwies

April  fools day this year will see some iglab brand foolishness. From 7:30 in the PMStudio we will be running some new games of spectral specialness.

Midnight tennis trial - in the darkness there are monsters, you have a light up bouncy ball you can use to find your way but doing so will reveal your position to all…

Monochrome - you see red they see green sneak through the darkness in-between.

Camera Tag - taking a picture is all about what you exclude. Take pictures of your team and exclude members of other teams to win.

Rodeo Frown - a mystery entry by Duncan Speakman…

Please feel free to BYOB and as usual iglab will be free but you have to sign up to turn up.

here is the registration