The “Make it! Play it!” workshop at the Window gallery went down last Friday night. Huge thanks to everyone who came out and contributed to making a game in 2-hours. We had a loose theme of “rooms in the house” and asked people to draw, paint, cut, paste, whistle, and hum elements that we’d assemble into a simple video game. The game we built is an interactive “diorama”, mimicking the tiny little shoebox worlds I loved creating for the book reports and science projects of my youth.
The drawings, cutouts and collages people made were artful and random, and the resulting game turned out more bizarre than i could have ever hoped for. I think a more structured game framework, a clearer set of instructions for the contributors, and a tighter theme for the evening would give the event a bit more focus, but the goal was creative collaboration & lo-fi fun, so in that regards I feel it was a total success. Like AJ said, “Scattershot but on the mark I think. The evening was crazy compressed fun!”
Most visitors pitched in, drawing characters, backdrops, and recording little sound effects. We had three “stations” going, manned by AJ, Luke D, and myself… the original plan was to create 3 unique games, but it soon became clear that 2 hours wasn’t enough time for one game, much less three so we quickly joined forces. In between runs to the hors d’oeuvres table, we frantically scanned/cropped/copied/animated over 50 handmade drawings and collages. Luke M has put photos, scans of some work, and the final game up on the Window blog.
Tons of thanks to Luke Munn for putting the online show together and organizing an awesome event, Andrew Johnson and Luke Duncalfe for an inspiring few hours of frenzied creativity on a Friday night, Sam & Ash and the other Window folks for making the show happen, and everyone who came and contributed.
