Palfrey's life

(I'm going to be doing at least one more post shortly, probably this evening, on various other things I want to do over the nearby future, but here's an item for this week).

On Wednesday, I'm going to the Sandpit. For the uninitiated, Sandpit is a bunch of experimental social games being run by the folks behind the Hide and Seek festival, but on a monthly rather than yearly basis. I loved Hide and Seek, and the one Sandpit I've gotten around to going to since then was also great, and I'd like to go again. The list of the big games for this month is available here

Unfortunately this time (due to overwhelming demand on earlier events) they're having to charge money (£4) for tickets, but this does give you 3 slots in the scheduled games (there's also a bunch of ambient and pick-up-and-play stuff going on as well). I'm planning on booking my ticket this evening (here for anyone that doesn't get to me in time), and given there's service charges and things am very willing to book some extras for others if anyone else says they want to come along. I'm planning on getting there at the beginning (6:30pm) so we can get the best choice of the available games.

(There's also a Facebook event page)

To quote their website:

Hide and Seek is a festival of social games and playful experiences, running in London from the 27th to the 29th of June 2008. It will encompass everything from fine artists making location-based work to huge flashmob games within the public spaces of the Southbank Centre.

I for one plan on spending a chunk of my weekend there. Programme of events is here, and I'm signed up to the Werewolf Night. Some events have limited space (e.g. Werewolf Night), so go there now!

I've just been playing a lovely little game called BreakQuest. At one level, it's a bat-and-balls, Arkanoid-style game that we've all seen a million of. Except, it's not. The first bright idea was to embed a decent physics model into the game, and then they started playing around with weird blocks - not just the "sit there, die when hit" ones, but odd shaped ones and ones that bounce around. And then there's more coolness - ever had the situation where you've been playing one of those games and the ball bounces into the top section of some blocks only to fly out the other side with practically zero damage? Well, in BreakQuest, there's the "gravitor" - press the right mouse button, and the ball is temporarily under the effect of gravity i.e. you can shape which way it goes in flight :-) The game is quite thoroughly psychotic, and utterly fun.

Now, this is a damn good game. So good, having played through the demo levels, I frantically paid up for the full version (~£12 - I *like* indie games). Why is it damn good? The physics engine, and what it lets the game designers do with an old genre. This got me thinking: two other games I've really liked in recent times are Gish (crazy platformer) and Half-life 2. Both have a full physics engine, and both use it to make the game more fun (HL2 less so). Can a physics engine be applied to other genres in interesting ways to create new genres? Maybe. I'm currently envisioning a Pac-man like game, except with the player in a spaceship under the effect of gravity (with trivial landing, not the damn hard landing of most thrust-style games, and probably bouncing off of walls). The "ghosts" become wall-crawling aliens who will eat your spaceship if you fly in the same corridor as them.

That's probably not the best example, but I'm betting some of you lot can come up with better ideas....