The Larkin Agents just want to say a huge thank you to all the players, designers, hosts and actors that made it down to our Larkin’ About at Contact event of Saturday 3rd Dec. This was the first of our regular events as resident company at Contact and we are super pleased with how it went.
We are proud to have hosted the first (to our knowledge) game of Circle Rules Football in Manchester at the start of the evening, with a little help from Dave Hat of Team Hat fame. We’re hoping that with a little practice and a few more games, we might even take on the Bristolians in the near future. Watch out!
Jana Wendler made a stunning game design debut with Spy School, a game which we’re certainly hoping to see a lot more of in the future.
UniverCityCulture ran Histonauts, a QR code game that took players around the Manchester University campus and delved into the past of famous academics linked to the university. For the results of Histonauts and some game images, head over here.
Sturgeon’s Law ran Improv Avatar during which players used twitter to deliver lines of dialogue to four actors in order to create a scene. Points were scored when actors performed specific actions that were unknown to them and not directly referred to in their received dialogue.
Vee Uye ran MixTape, a player/designer collaboration in which players hunted for cassettes tapes around the building that contained monologue delivered over specially selected songs. For more on MixTape, head here.
Greg Foster ran Moral Kombat, a high energy spectacle that used the Mortal Kombat videogame structure and two very convincing actors to allow audience members to confess their crimes and battle to win forgiveness for their confessed sins.
Finally, Larkin’ About ran an additional chase game called Spirit of Spring, in which players headed out into the night in order to collect from the spirits of the seasons the sacred ingredients of the 9 Herb Charm, a potion that had the power to save the Spirit of Spring and rescue us all from deadly Winter. Unfortunately for the players, they were being pursued…relentlessly!
Special thanks to the Whitworth Pub and Big Hands for allowing us to invade their venues during this final game. Much appreciated!
Thanks also, of course, to Contact who gave us the space and support to pull off our event so succesfully.
The talented Albino Mosquito helped to document the evening so keep a look out for stills and videos from the event on this site.
For a lovely write up of our event from one of our attendees, head over to Musing From Manchester.
We’ll keep you posted on our next event at Contact, likely to be in May next year. In the meantime, if you’d like to submit an idea for a game for it, please do get in touch at larkin.about2009@gmail.com.
Stay playful,
Tricia, Aowyn, Crofty & Vee
