I’m currently taking part in a Concordia summer program called “Critical Hit” in Montreal, Canada. It’s about making games – and, more specifically, about making experimental games using wearables. The first week was more about getting to know each other, getting several workshops (among others for using Pebble and Muse) and playing urban games with each other before the actual jamming is going to start.
I did make one game this week though: Chronic the Hedgehog, an Urban Game on escalators about persuading strangers, made in about 1 hour together with Jessica Blanchet, Grayson Earle and Titouan Millet.
(Video taken by Jessica Rose Marcotte)
The game is played with two teams, two escalators, two cups, a dice per team member and a lot of unsuspecting strangers.
One team starts at the upper position, the other one at the lower position. I will explain the game from the lower team perspective – the other team just does the same mirrored.
To prepare the game, the lower team places a cup in front of the downstream escalator. Then each team member takes a dice and they queue in front of the upstream escalator.
Once the game starts, the first team member steps on the upstream escalator. They cannot move their feet – they have to stand on it until they reach the top. In the meantime, they try to get a stranger on the parallel downstream escalator to take their dice and put it in the cup on the botton of the downstream escalator. If they succeed, this team member is done. If they don’t, they have to take the downstream escalator to go down again and queue for another try.
Once your team member reaches the top, the next queued team member can start.
The goal is to be the first team which has all their dice in their cup.
And yeah, that’s the game. It was a bit chaotic, but pretty fun.
If you want to read more about the first week, take a look at the recap post on the Critical Hit website!
PS: Here’s a picture to appease the preview thumbnail generation gods of Social Media.
