This year’s Hide and Seek’s Weekender was a delicious magical sandwich filled with, fun, inspiration and silliness.

Since we were there to run Gentrification: The Game! (thanks for having us guys!) I didn’t get much time to play, but of the few I got to experience I had two favourites: Taunt and The Agency.

I loved these two games for a bunch of reasons, but I loved how they were at two ends of the complexity spectrum. One was really, short and simple to pick up and play, while the the other really intricate, layered and time intensive (both for players and the designers) . Both totally rocked their respective styles.

Holly Gramazio’s Taunt is basically team based, simplified mad libs with more yelling with the aim of teaching some of the history behind the English language. It was really easy to pick up and play, with a very high pay off of fun. And I learnt about the two origins of the many of the words in the English language (Anglo-Saxon and Norman). Neat!

Invisible Flock‘s The Agency is a whole other beast. I got addicted to eurogames (board games with short, simple but clever rules; an emphasis of strategy and tactics over luck; constructive not destructive and have a high level of social interaction) while living in Western Australia (thanks Stew!) So, imagine a eurogame on crack, complete with costumes, actors, a flat screen tv with a readout of game stats, a phone and intercom system to interact with NPCs and and even a small audience to watch the whole thing play out. It was immersive and engaging. The one thing I would’ve liked more was more audience interaction. There is something really compelling about being part of a game performance, so really bringing in the audience would take the game to the next level.

We can’t wait to see what happens next year!

Over and out.