Now Play This: the games you need to play at Somerset House this weekend

Get hands on with more than 20 games 
The Now Play This exhibition brings together game design in different formats
Ben Peter Catchpole
Amelia Heathman6 April 2018

Take a trip to Somerset House this weekend and you will see the beautiful London building transformed into a playground full of games, visual arts and experiments.

This is because Now Play This is in town, an exhibition of games and interactive installation, as part of the London Games Festival.

The exhibition brings together gaming design in different formats, using the work of visual artists, architects and digital games designers.

It looks at the experimental ways people approach games and brings it all together in one event.

This is the fourth time Now Play This has been staged, its third as part of the games festival, and this year is focusing on place, pattern and game making.

“Games can address place in two very different ways,” Now Play This’s curator Holly Gramazio, from Matheson Marcault tells the Standard. “Game makers can use the tools at their disposal to communicate the sense of what it’s like to be somewhere.

“Or, games can invite you to look at a place that you’re in and draw attention to new elements you may not have noticed.”

As part of the event, Gramazio gets to commission new games exclusively for Now Play This.

This year’s offering includes The Loss Levels by Dan Hett, the games designer whose brother Martyn was killed in the Manchester Arena bombing last May. The game draws on Hett’s experiences in the aftermath of the terrorist attack.

In addition, there is a new game named Titonic Fisherman by American games designers Froach Club. The game is about an animated group of friends by a lake. Players interact with the game by pushing 20 buttons, one for each character, which causes them to do something like jump into the water.

But, each button is also a music sequencer, with a sound assigned to each button.

“I’m really interested to see what people do with Titonic Fisherman,” says Gramazio. “Using the sound effects, you can build a sequence up, and create this raw animated pattern of behaviours and noises.”

That’s not all you’ll be able to do at Now Play This. Across the weekend, there is going to be a workshop named Flat Games. This will see a whole game made across the event and you will be able to take part and contribute.

“We’re going to get people to answer prompts and draw pictures to feed into this giant game. Then we will release the game online at the end of the weekend and I’m excited to see how it works,” explains Gramazio.

When preparing for the event, Gramazio and her co-worker producer Sophie Sampson will play up to 50 games a day to find the best ones to include. Who wouldn’t want that as a job?

“It’s so much fun,” says Gramazio. “It’s great to have something that keeps us aware of what’s going on in games and what people are experimenting with.

“And because we draw from lots of different areas, including the wider world of interactive art, it’s really, really interesting.”

Now Play This is at Somerset House this weekend 6-8 April as part of London Games Festival. Tickets start from £8

The Evening Standard is the official media partner of the London Games Festival

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