Claire Hooper can’t be at the comedy festival this year, but she’d still like to be worshipped.
She wants you to look for her face in every shop window, on every street corner, in your reflection in the mirror.
In exchange she’s offering spiritual enlightenment. But only if you make it to the end.
An hour long, city wide, Claire Hooper themed game. Venue: Statue of Burke and Wills, City Square Dates: 26 & 27 March, 2, 3, 9, 10, 16 & 17 April Time: 6.00pm Tickets: $23.00 full, $19.00 concession or group of 4 or more. Bookings: eventbrite.com.au/e/being-claire-hooper-tickets-20795087667
The Cloud is a brand new digitally supported alternate reality game by Pop Up Playground and Tech Assault for VicHealth.
Set in “a minutes from now” future The Cloud is a mystery to solve, hidden all across the city. A community of people who play a game to stay fit and ready for anything. And a conversation about what it means to be human.
Explore the city.
Find the clues.
Decide what happens next.
What is The Cloud
The Cloud is a game that uses the internet, social media, digitally supported street game, online story telling and ubiquitous technology (smart phones, SMS, etc…) to set the players to solving an unfolding mystery.
The story told by the Cloud is a collaborative effort between the players and the writers. Like a role playing game, the writers offer a fictional/simulated situation for the players to react/respond to.
All official direct interactions with the game proceed as if there is no game.
The website, social media presence, on street game runners and in game communications will be themed within the narrative environment of The Cloud.
Part of the fun, is pretending its real.
The story of The Cloud is set within a community of people playing a game on the streets of the city, called The Run. The Run is a digitally supported game of territory acquisition, mental, physical and social challenges played in the CBD.
In teams of three to five, players search for clues, solve puzzles, discover and complete challenges and compete to capture as much territory in the city over a two hour period as possible.
Players are also offered training missions, available at any time via an online portal. These training missions are automatically conducted via Conducttr and purpose built software designed by Tech Assault.
Successful completion of the missions contributes to the collective story telling exercise and adds to players skill sets (metaphorically and literally).
The Missions, The Run and the social story telling game aspects of The Cloud are all designed specifically to encourage increased physical activity, to increase awareness of the personal habits and environments that impact on physical and mental health and encourage mindfulness as a coping strategy, to build self confidence in unfamiliar environments and self reliance in changing situations.
The Cloud, both in the game fiction and in the real world, is designed to make its players faster, stronger and smarter.
How the game works
We’ve set up a Tutorial Mission which lasts approx an hour (depending on how you play).
The Season Pass gets you access to all the other missions. Once you have a Season Pass, throughout the week you’ll get access to all the other missions via the website as they’re released each day. These missions also take as long as the player takes to complete them. The game lasts all week.
If you buy the Tutorial Mission and then want to keep playing, you can purchase a reduced price Season Pass for you can play the rest of the week’s missions too.
The final day, Sunday the 13th March, will include the last clues and The Run.The Run takes around two hours and is played across the streets of the Melbourne CBD.
Citydash, by Fire Hazard Games and presented in Melbourne by Pop Up Playground, is an hour-long team game in which players try to locate hidden checkpoints while avoiding guards. Each code you enter from a checkpoint scores points – but get spotted by a guard and you’ll lose some! At the end of the hour, will you walk away with the top score?
Each team needs at least one smartphone, which you use to log into the Citydash web site; it’ll provide you with clues to checkpoint locations and opportunities to score bonus points. Being fast is useful, but caution, stealth and cleverness are just as important – you’ll need teamwork and strong leadership to win!
Date: 30th Jan
Times: 4:30 and 6:30pm
Location: Wilson Avenue Public Space, corner of Wilson Ave and Sydney Rd, Brunswick Victoria. Near Jewel station!
On the third Wednesday of each month, Pop Up Playground invites some of the brightest minds in Melbourne to compete in a battle of wits, smarts and silliness – and you’re playing as well!
Test your general knowledge, lateral thinking, communication skills, balance and coordination against the biggest brains we can find in challenges inspired by board games, classic party games and the imaginations of Pop Up Playground‘s game designers.
June games included: Throw Things at Maths ~ Flip the Board ~ Nonsense or Not ~ Heard it All Before. Result: Audience 1 Guests 0
Here’s the line-up for July!
* Learning Services manager of the State Library of Victoria, Andrew Hiskens
* Comedian, SYN radio presenter and star of Channel 31’s Live On Bowen, Claire Sullivan
* Broadcaster, writer and founder of the Freeplay and This Is Not Art festivals, Marcus Westbury
* Award-winning comedian, actor and writer Damian Callinan.
Hosted by Ben McKenzie (Dungeon Crawl, Night Terrace).
Check out last month’s Your Turn, which resulted in the audience (Team Mighty Zest) winning over our two guest teams -Kasia Kaczmarek and Lawrence Leung (Team K-Law) and Sarah Walker and Alice Fraser (Team Curly Girls*)
Pop Up Playground regrets to announce that is no longer attending PAX Australia and that the “No Controller, No Board” panel has been cancelled.
We’ve considered this carefully over the last couple of weeks, but with everything that’s happened in that time, there’s a general consensus among panel members that we are no longer comfortable participating in PAX Australia. Pop Up Playground has worked hard to make sure that the events we run and the culture of pervasive gaming we promote is inclusive and non-discriminatory.
While we have read the retractions and apologies regarding the controversial “Why So Serious?” panel and Mike Krahulik’s offensive Twitter comments about transgender people, we unfortunately feel that PAX Australia has not sufficiently distanced itself from the troubled history of Penny Arcade for us to feel comfortable appearing at this year’s event. It’s disappointing, as we love many things about PAX and would love to bring our new games tradition to the PAX audience.
Claire Hooper can’t be at the comedy festival this year, but she’d still like to be worshipped.
The Cloud is a brand new digitally supported alternate reality game by Pop Up Playground and Tech Assault for VicHealth.
Citydash, by Fire Hazard Games and presented in Melbourne by Pop Up Playground, is an hour-long team game in which players try to locate hidden checkpoints while avoiding guards. Each code you enter from a checkpoint scores points – but get spotted by a guard and you’ll lose some! At the end of the hour, will you walk away with the top score?
On the third Wednesday of each month, Pop Up Playground invites some of the brightest minds in Melbourne to compete in a battle of wits, smarts and silliness – and you’re playing as well!