This Saturday, August 20, 2 pm in Reinickendorf: shamanistic weather-control, a real underground-casino, ghosts around the lake… Come out and play at our next SNEAK PRELUDE, this time as part of Salon K.

After a warm-up with some fresh versions of IP-classics like Tiny Urban Game and TRON we want to test three completely new games with you:

Clouds – use your shamanistic powers to guide saving rain onto dry fields, or be a cloud yourself…
Surveillance-Casino – now complete with Blackjack, Poker and Roulette…
Ghosts around the lake – a pleasant walk between life and death

SNEAK PRELUDE is Invisible Playground’s mobile playtesting format, where we try out brand new games for the first time with real players. Every run is an experiment, in which you will learn something new about yourself, your fellow players and the urban playing field. + It’s fun!

Meeting point: Franz-Neumann-Platz (U8) – map

More info about Salon K (in German): http://www.salon-k.de/programm/salon-k-im-august/

Looking forward to playing with you!
Your Invisible Playground

International Street Games Festival
17-19 June 2011 – HAU2 Berlin

All infos about the festival can be found here.

Our first SNEAK PRELUDE at the 100° Festvial was great fun! We playtested:

Ninja-Smuggling – a mash-up of the popular hand-slapping game making the rounds and a simple smuggling mechanic. Feels weirdly like Street Fighter on the sidewalk.

360°-Mehringplatz-TRON – Hightech! Equipped with Mp3 players and LED headsets, players orbit Mehringplatz. Red and green particles bump off of each other or step aside at the very last moment…

Surveillance-Roulette – Communters als roulette balls. Surveillance as a game of chance. As soon as the target steps onto the platform, Rien Ne Va Plus crackled through the walkie-talkie. Nice impressions at the 100 Word Blog (German).

Packet Sniffing – The first street game with real smell! Chaos at the crime scene! The intern as completely mixed up all the evidence packets that had been pre-sorted by smell. Restoring the order of smell is a tough logistical problem.

Thanks to everyone who came out to play and test with us! Here are two fun videos of the TRON-particles entering the playing field and of packet sniffers at work. Thanks to Viktor for the photos and videos!

cc-licensed image by bloqseven

We’d like to invite you to the first SNEAK PRELUDE – our new playtesting event. This time, we’ll be at 100° Festival and try some new street games designed for the area around the theater Hebbel-am-Ufer (HAU): Ninja-Smuggling, 360°-Mehringplatz-TRON, Surveillance Roulette and Packet Sniffing! Dates are February 25/26/27, start for 20 players at 6pm in front of the HAU 2 ticket office where you can buy the day or festival passes. There’s loads of great stuff at 100° – it’s worth it!

Extremely brave players are also invited to an informal Pre-Prelude on 2/17 at 18h. Please drop us a note at connect@invisibleplayground.com if you’re willing to be one of the Alpha-Testers. We look forward to playing with you!

Call for Street Games!

One more thing… here’s an announcement for summer we’re very excited about. On June 17-19, together with a bunch of brilliant guests – among them the makers of Come Out & Play, Hide & Seek und igFest – we’ll be celebrating You Are GO! – the first international Street Games Festival in Germany. This is going to be big! But we need more local street game designers! If you’ve got a playful project that you’d like to integrate into the festival, let us know before 3/15. Further information on the Call for Street Games can be found here.

Video by Judith Klapper and Johanna Aust

Music by Woima Collective

We’re kicking off 2011 with some design tweaks to the site and a whole bunch of updates – check out game descriptions, fotos and videos from last years MACHT SPIELE! Street Games Series (trailer embedded above), information and videos covering the audio game StadtRundKlang and the transmedia game SCHWELLENLAND.

Have fun and stay tuned for updates on future events – 2011 is packed with good things coming up!

This summer, the technologies of power will fall into the hands of game designers and gamers.

In collaboration with Artitude, we’re offering a series of free street games workshops and events at different locations in Berlin – at Alexanderplatz, the Oberbaum Bridge and Mariannenplatz. During the workshops, we’ll be equipped with gadgets and game mechanics and look forward to developing street games themed around surveillance, camouflage and border crossing. Following each workshop, these brand new games can be played during a public event. Then we move on to the next place to adapt, iterate, tune.

Next events:

7 August, 10:00-18:00 – Game Design Workshop III

Meeting Point: Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Mariannenplatz 2, Facebook-Event

8 August, 16:00 – Street Games between Mariannenplatz und Heinrichplatz

Meeting Point: Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Mariannenplatz 2 – at the finissage of the Exhibition Locate Me!

We’d love to design and play with you, so come by and spread the word! Full details at machtspiele.org

Together with matthaei & konsorten Sebastian is currently installing the 10-day transmedia game SCHWELLENLAND in Vienna. Sign up to play, starting June 3, here.

Please note: SCHWELLENLAND is only a game.

After the Panel (14:30-16:15), we’re inviting everyone to come play our new game Space Station Escape, in which an alien virus spreads inside the space station underneath Alexanderplatz! Recover the escape sequence and board the rescue capsule before the station self-destructs…

Meeting point for the game is 16:45 at the Weltzeituhr on Alexanderplatz. Bring a pen or a pencil. You don’t have to be attending the conference to join the game. If the weather is good, we’ll also be playing some more rounds of Tower Defense around the TV Tower afterwards. Yay!