Snout Games FTW (Part 4 of 4)

Last week, Mike Selinker's Wired article on "The 10 Greatest 'Games' Ever Played" mentioned 4 different Team Snout productions. Let me show you them.

Previous: Police Detectives!

8. FoBiK coffin

Here's the coffin being inspected on location, inside a self-storage space in Oakland, by GC member Jeff Allen. (Photo by Curtis C. Chen)



And here's a look at the electronics inside, built by GC member Cary Roberts. There was no actual power switch, so we had to take some reference photos to show which wires to connect to turn on the device. (Photo by Curtis C. Chen)



Two switches had to be closed to activate the audio playback: first, a spring-loaded sensor inside the coffin, requiring someone to rest their head inside the coffin (right on top of the speakers); and second, a contact in the hinge, so the lid actually had to be closed. By the time the last team went through, both switches had been broken and jammed into their "on" positions. That's okay--we heard that some teams refused to get in the coffin at all, but this way, they were still able to enjoy the puzzle.

The coffin itself was built by GC helper Todd Stansell, who took it home after The Game and used it as a coffee table until his wife got sick of it. It eventually ended up with our friend (and current GC member) Acorn Pooley, and periodically shows up as a prop in his annual Halloween haunted house.

For more information about FoBiK, check out our GC wrap-up site.

And that's it for this trip down memory lane! If you'd like to hear more about what happens behind the scenes at Game Control, tune into the SnoutCast every Tuesday morning.

Would you like to play The Game? You're in luck: Team Snout is planning another event for this August in Portland, Oregon. Go to WarTron.NET for more details!

Snout Games FTW (Part 3 of 4)

Last week, Mike Selinker's Wired article on "The 10 Greatest 'Games' Ever Played" mentioned 4 different Team Snout productions. Let me show you them.

Previous: Superheroes!

6. Homicide: Life on the Farm Nitinol

I don't have any photos of the finished clue, but here's GC member Jeff Allen working on the "jigs" we used to hold the pieces of memory wire in place during the baking process. We used an industrial oven to get high enough temperatures to "encode" the shapes we wanted, but we also needed other materials which would stand up to that much heat. I think the final build used steel wire to secure a bundle of Nitinol to each letter-shaped length of copper tubing (shown here being bent into shape by Jeff). (Photo by Curtis C. Chen)



You didn't actually have to set the wires on fire, and they didn't actually melt (though the plastic flags attached to the wires did, for at least a few teams). One team laid out their wires on top of their van's engine block, which generated enough heat to activate the Nitinol's shape memory.

Overall, we got a lot of great feedback, including one player who thought it was "[u]nbelievable stuff--that was so beyond my comprehension, it was like X-files shit." Given that this was the first Game we ever ran, and many things didn't go quite right, it was encouraging that this clue turned out so well.

ObSnoutCast: You can hear a team phone call from HLOTF and Jeff on working with Nitinol, plus a 10-years-later retrospective with GC member Sean Gugler!

For more information about the Homicide Game, check out our GC wrap-up site.

Next: Scary stuff!

Snout Games FTW (Part 2 of 4)

Last week, Mike Selinker's Wired article on "The 10 Greatest 'Games' Ever Played" mentioned 4 different Team Snout productions. Let me show you them.

Previous: Wizards!

2. Justice Unlimited petitions

After a purposefully chaotic icebreaker activity at the start location, teams were issued clipboards with petitions calling for the banning of "dihydrogen monoxide" and told to canvass the area collecting signatures. No further instructions were provided. Many costumed teams wandered through Ghirardelli Square. (Photos by Karl Larson)





This clue/activity is also mentioned at the very top of the Wikipedia page for The Game, and I think it was memorable because it captured many of the magical, non-puzzle aspects which make The Game so much fun. The actual solution wasn't very complex--teams just had to find the right people, planted by Game Control, who would "sign" with the name of the next location. But it was an experience you probably wouldn't ever have outside of The Game.

The wrist-mounted computers weren't used for that first clue, but teams did have to enter most of their puzzle answers into the device, which would tell them where to go next. This Game also featured the Bat-Blinker gadget, which used the same persistence-of-vision display trick as the later Hogwarts wand.

For more information about the Justice Unlimited Game, check out our GC wrap-up site and Larry Hosken's "Operation Justice Unlimited" report.

Next: Police Detectives!

Snout Games FTW (Part 1 of 4)

Last week, Mike Selinker's Wired post on "The 10 Greatest 'Games' Ever Played" made a bit of a splash within the Game community. (I was personally quite chuffed that 40% of the events he called out were Team Snout productions.)

Before the article went up, Mike posted on Facebook asking if anyone had photos from any of the events they'd be willing to share. I sent him a few pictures which Wired didn't use in the end, but since I had already spent the time digging them up, I figured I might as well do a show-and-tell here over the next few days.

Starting at the top of Mike's list...

1. Hogwarts wands

Here's Sean Gugler (late of Doctor When Game Control) testing the wand prototype. The cable is providing power, and sending data back to a laptop which records the wand motions. We had everyone on GC cast the same spells, so wand-maker Acorn could see how much variation and "slop" there was in different people's movements and adjust the recognition software accordingly. (Photo by Curtis C. Chen)



Here's Seth Golub of Team RadiKS (Relaxed Alchemical Dilettantes Investigating Kurious Spells) in wand class on Saturday, demonstrating the "Nope!" response which indicates an unrecognized spell. You can see the full reference for turning spell names (puzzle answers) into wand motions starting on page 43 of our Hogwarts textbook (5MB PDF download). (Photo by David Lindes)



And a couple of photos from the grand finale on Sunday, when every team had to cast the same spell simultaneously to defeat our villain. Not surprisingly, the bad guy turned out to be the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, played by Sean. (Photos by Team Snout)





For more information about the Hogwarts Game, check out Larry Hosken's "Hogwarts Inside Out" write-up and our GC wiki.

Next: Superheroes!