Power Game - I was off seeing Rhys Darby, of Flight of the Conchords fame, doing standup (seriously disappointing but I don't really want to review that), so my parents very kindly went in my place they however had very little to report. As I said in my last post you could either join in with the gambling action or you could observe from the bar area. My parents went for the observation method and quickly discovered the issues with this method as there were only a couple of sets of headphones with each monitor so they didn't really get to report much. All that said however the ICA bar is a great bar and they had a nice time drinking instead.
Hide and Seek -
It must be said this is not what I know as Pervasive Gaming (that is a longer conversation though and one for anoter time), this was what I would call a Social Gaming Festival and it was great! We arrived at The Royal Festival Hall at 8pm on the first evening of the festival. The Clore Ballroom looked somewhat like a University Societies fair.
After a misjudgement on our part of how the player allocation worked we ended up managing to sign ourselves up for 2 games towards the end of the evening and had to go and grab some sushi in the mean time. When we returned the ballroom had calmed down a little and it was time to get down to the gaming!
Our first game was called Parse the Parcel - this actually had nothing to do with unwrapping presents.
This game was a team game, two teams of 5 were sat opposite each other and 7 parcels were handed out (3 cubes, 2 spheres and 2 triangular).
Quick rules of the game: each team had a set sequence of spheres, cubes and triangles that they had to put the shapes in. Players could pass the parcels horizontally or to their opposite player (but not diagonally).
The action: I'm not sure any of our team had a clue, neither did the other team for that matter but miraculously they seemed to beat us every time. So much so that Hannah got so agitated that she hurled a spherical parcel at the head of an opposing team member, who was so stunned she could barely talk. - social gaming gets violent! (most things get violent around Hannah though). Final score was 5 -3 to the other team... we still feel quite bitter although not quite as bitter as one of our team who referred to members of the other team as cunts.
Our 2nd game is a more well known game (apparently), known as werewolf although the variation we played was Super Secret Robot Werewolf (aka Battlestar Galactica Werewolf). There were 18 of us. We were each handed a role card, a third of us were given Super Secret Robot ("Cylon") cards the rest of us were given Crew Member cards. There were two phases of the game; a night phase - where the Super Secret Robots silently select one of the crew members to kill; and a day phase where the crew members accuse someone of being a cylon and throw them out of the air lock.
Action: This was a long game so I won't tell you step by step but insults and accusations were flying. One guy almost got lynched for having a quiff another young girl was almost lynched for being quiet - it should be said that this quiet young girl was actually a cylon.
I was assigned the role of crew member and at first, being the kind of guy I am, I was unwilling to throw possibly innocent people out of the airlock. I was, however, quickly brainwashed by the mob mentality and it wasn't too long before I led the mob in the successful killing of two cylons, at which point my reign as leader of the mob came to an abrupt end when I was zapped
.All in all it was a really fun night and should you get the chance to attend another one of Hide and Seek's events you should definitely do so. http://www.hideandseekfest.co.uk/
