I love playing games and wish I had the time to play more. Video games, board games, running-around-blindfolded games (I’ll come to that later), I’m a sucker for it all. Suffice to say, the Hide & Seek Festival last weekend was right up my alley.

The Hide and Seek festival is an annual event in London, where people come together to play and talk about games. It celebrates the creative and social aspects of gaming and they invite artists and professionals from all disciplines to experiment with game design. Hosted at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, the festival is a couple of days of pure social gaming pleasure, harking back to the unfettered fun of childhoods past.

I couldn’t find the time to spend the whole weekend at the festival, so I had to decide between the Saturday and the Sunday. I chose Sunday, cause the games seems somewhat funner and less spots were taken for them. I would have loved to have gone both days, but this year that just wasn’t possible. I did however go to the Werewolf gathering on Friday night, which was a lot of fun.

I didn’t get to play as much games as I’d like, but the games I did play were great. I’ll try to write a bit about each of them (and also one I didn’t get to play, but is unique enough to talk about).

Werewolf

Ever since my first Werewolf night (got dragged to it by Cristiano, I had no idea what I was getting myself into), I’ve been a huge fan and with all the BarCamps I’ve been going to, I’m proud to say I’m a pretty good player. If you don’t know the rules, check out the Werewolf wiki. In short: group of Villagers with a couple (2-3) hidden Werewolves (and maybe extra characters, like the Healer or the Seer). At night everybody has their eyes closed, the Werewolves kill someone. During the day the Villagers have to figure out who the Werewolves are and lynch someone. Game is over if all the Werewolves or all the Villagers are dead. The game revolves around talking; if nobody talks the game just doesn’t work. For me, it really helped to become (a little bit) more outspoken, cause you do have to be a bit blunt if you want to get your point through.

I played three games at the H&S; the first one being the most fun (and stressfull!). During that game there were 12 Villagers, 2 Werewolves and one Seer. And I was a Werewolf… Before the game had even really started, one newbie already had a question: “What exactly does the Seer do?” Okay, so she’s the Seer. Now my stroke of genius was not to kill her straightaway. Later on in the game it gave me the edge towards other experience players (like Sheila and Glynn) that of course I wasn’t a Werewolf, cause otherwise I would have killed her at the start. Anyhow, my fellow Werewolf got lynched in the very first round, but I managed to survive right to the last round, where two of the final three Villagers nominated and (with my help) lynched the final other Villager. The Werewolves were victorious!

Now that was a great game, but of course after that nobody trusted me anymore. So in the two following games even though I was a simple harmless Villager, nobody believed me and I got lynched both times. I’m trying to find a venue (separate room, no hire charge) so that we can organize a couple more Werewolf nights, cause I want to play this more often than only at BarCamps!

And I Saw

I went to the Southbank and I saw… remember that kids game? That was the basis for And I Saw. Throughout the Southbank “game area” they had hidden big blue stickers with a 5-digit number on them, like the one in the photo below. Idea was that you had to find as many of those stickers as possible and text the number when you found one. Every player also had a sticker, so the more players you met (or sneakily shadowed) the more points you collected. At the end of the day the scores were tallied on their website and you could see what you had seen that day. Results: I was seen 10 times and I saw 28 things.

The Lost Sport of Olympia

“Discovered” by Jane McGonigal while doing research for The Lost Ring ARG (for the 2008 Beijing Olympics), the Lost Sport of Olympia is a mysterious game the ancient Greeks used to play that was eventually banned from the Olympics. If you haven’t played it yourself, I’m guessing it will sound just plain weird, but (like Werewolf) I really enjoyed myself, albeit in a different manner.

With The Lost Game one person is the Runner who is blindfolded and put in the center of the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is drawn out on the ground with chalk; it’s not really a labyrinth, cause there’s only one path, but it winds a couple of times around. The other players have to create the walls of the labyrinth, standing on the drawn-out outline. With his arms folded across his chest (grabbing his shoulders) the Runner has to go navigate through the labyrinth, but is not allowed to talk to the walls. The only communication comes from the Walls humming. How they hum or when they hum is part of the tactic of the game, but you can imagine that only Walls infront of the Runner should hum, highlighting in which direction he should go. Now what (to me) makes it even more interesting is that the Labyrinth isn’t built completely from the start. There aren’t enough players for that, so the Walls have to keep moving around making up the parts of the labyrinth only moments before the Runner goes through them. Here’s a video of one of the groups at Hide & Seek:

The Lost Sport: 5 circuit labyrinth from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

It’s not your most conventional game, but I love how it combines tactics, co-operation and skill. I started out with a group in a small labyrinth of 3 circles, playing a Wall, and after a couple of tries one Runner managed to get 30 seconds. Most other groups at the time were still stuck at 1 minute plus (the world record is 13 seconds!!), so we graduated to the bigger 8-circuit labyrinth. Turns out it was a lot trickier, but still a lot of fun. When one of the other groups wanted a go at the big labyrinth, a couple of us returned to the smaller one and I attempted my first blindfolded go as Runner. I did it in 36 seconds! Not bad for a newbie apparently. I’ve even joined the London Olympic Team, who are training for (you guessed it) the Olympics.

Cruel 2 Be Kind

Now this game I didn’t play, cause I was too late with registering for it, but I saw people playing and it just looked crazy. With Cruel 2 Be Kind you register a team and with your team you go out and kill other teams. You “kill” by being kind. This means serenading them, complementing their eyes or mistaking them for a famous person. Problem is you don’t know who are players and who are normal people enjoying a day out on the Southbank. So you could be is singing to a complete stranger! Besides that once you kill a team, they become part of your team and as the game continues you get bigger and bigger groups.  Because all members of a team have to be participate in a kill, you get these large groups of about 20 people running towards another group singing some love song. It was hilarious to watch!

All in all, it was a great festival and next year I’m definitely keeping that weekend free to enjoy the full two days. If you want more information, check out the Hide & Seek website.

I haven’t been watching Doctor Who for that long; I only jumped in at the end of season 2, but since then it only seems to be getting better. Last week I decided to watch all the episodes I hadn’t seen and watched the first two seasons, so now I’m kind of on a Doctor Who high. I loved last Saturday’s Doctor Who episode, the penultimate episosde of this season (The Stolen Earth) and just had to take some time to theorize about the finale. I don’t want to spoil anything, so: beware, spoilers after the pic!

Beware: Here be spoilers! 

If you’re reading this I assume you’ve seen the episode I’m talking about and the major cliffhanger at the end: the Doctor starts regenerating! Seriously, was anyone expecting that? The moment he got shot, I of course had the feeling that would happen, but before that? No way. And now what? How will this be resolved? Reports are that David Tennant has signed on for the three specials of next year and has even started filming some of it. But can we actually trust these sources?

I think there are 5 possible situations that could happen:

1. The Doctor regenerates into a new actor and stays that way.

If this is the case, I have to applaud the makers for keeping this secret. In this darn age it seems an impossible mission and if they actually managed not to reveal this major spoiler… freaking amazing. I don’t think I’d be that happy though with this option, cause that means no more David Tennant! I’m sure whoever they’ll get to replace Tennant will be great and we’ll warm up to him, but still let us keep Tennant a few more seasons.

2. The Doctor regenerates into a new actor, but turns back into Tennant.  

In this scenario there are two things that could happen. First one is that this new form the Doctor turns into is a one time appearance. He changes back into Tennant and this form is never seen again (with some mumbo-jumbo that time has changed so the next time he regenerates it won’t be into that form). Second thing that could happen is that this is a preview of the next Doctor. Whenever Tennant leaves the show, this is the actor who will take over.

3. The Doctor “degenerates” into a previous incarnation and stays that way.

Ehm, well, it is a possibility, right? But, yeah, highly unlikely.

4. The Doctor “degenerates” into a previous incarnation, but turns back into Tennant.

I could see this happening. I wouldn’t put it pass Davies to bring Christopher Ecclestone or an earlier Doctor back for a moment, only to “fix” it and continue with Tennant. It also wouldn’t be too difficult to have kept secret; a couple of scenes with the previous Doctor on a closed set, pretty easy to keep quiet.

5. The Doctor tries to regenerate, but is stuck in his current form.

I think this would be the most boring option; something goes wrong, so the regeneration can’t be completed and they have to find some other way to heal the Doctor or something like that. After all the big fuss, it would kind of feel like the easy way out and I would really be disappointed if they do this. It has to be something “grander” than this, don’t you think?

The first situation would be the most shocking and sure to go down in TV history, but I don’t think it will happen. With what we’ve heard about Tennant, I truly think he’ll be back for future episodes. I’m hoping it won’t be the 5th option, but from the others I’m not sure which I’d rather prefer.

So do you think I’ve covered every possibility? Or will Davies do something even more ridiculous? Any other possible scenarios you can come up with?

Interesting links for June 20th through July 3rd:

• Peleg Design - Some of these designs are gorgeous. I love the wine bottle holder and the domino candle holder.
• TMB?s 10 Comic Book Movie Alternate Castings - Interesting alternatives to comic book castings. A couple of them truly make sense; I could easily see the girl in Chuck as Sue Storm (way better than Jessica Alba; but then anyone would have been better than her).
• A special “Where’s WALL-E” edition of Why For? - Great list of easter eggs hidden within Pixar’s movies. Did you know Marvin (the clown fish) from Finding Nemo appears in Monster Inc.? Or that The Incredibles appear on a comic in Finding Nemo?
• The 50 Best Pun Stores - A list of 50 Stores with great puns as names. My favourites have got be Thai Tanic (Thai restaurant), Cane & Able (Mobility Healthcare specialists) and Bon A-Pet-Treat (Pet Bakery).