My day off… at Dare ProtoPlay

Sometimes I actually take a day off. It’s not often but occasionally I take off my gaming hat and do something else. I thought the perfect opportunity for this recently would be when my good friend Kate was coming to stay for the weekend. Having been in Frag Dolls together for years we’ve rarely had time together ‘off the clock’, so to speak, and we thought we’d share a nice weekend sightseeing, shopping and going to restaurants.  So, of course we ended up trying out a ton of new games in development at Dare to be Digital’s ProtoPlay, playing Denki’s upcoming Xbox Live game Quarrel and meeting one of my gaming heroes.

ProtoPlay had 14 teams and 70 contestants from 14 universities across three continents creating their games over 10 weeks. Not only were the games completely new but conceptually they brought entirely new ways of thinking about games to the table. By the time I’d finished nudging small children off the test PC’s, wrestled Xbox and Wii controllers from innocent bystanders and hogged every console I could get to, my head was spinning with these completely new ways to play.

After feeling that maybe we weren’t really carrying out our ‘weekend off’ in the spirit in which we had planned it we slinked away upstairs with the intention of buggering off for something to eat. On our way out what did we spy but the Denki stand with a game I’ve heard loads about, Quarrel. I’ve been hoping to get my hands on it for a while and just couldn’t resist. All the pods were taken up and I was just about to nudge a child in the face when I saw someone who I thought might be able to  help me out. Actual Gary Penn. Gary Penn, Ex Creative Director of DMA, Gary Penn who helped make Crackdown, Gary Penn now Studio Head at Denki, Gary Penn, official games press legend and former Editor of Zzap!64. You know the guy. So I go over shove my hand out and say, in my best voice, Excuse me Mr Penn, my name’s Kirsten from Ready Up and I recently did an interview with you for my Lessons in Games… “Oh yes, of course! Come, and I’ll show you Quarrel.” And that was that. Like long lost brothers we were, except I’m not a guy and he was just being polite. Still, Gary Penn, eh?

Quarrel is a strategy word game taking elements of Scrabble, Risk and Countdown bringing them together in a bright fun package. The game had Ready Up’s Dan and my friend Kate shouting “PIG! PIG!” and “LIMES!” over my shoulder and Gary jumping up and down behind me shouting big clever legendary journalist and Quarrel expert type words at me that I’d never be able to spell before the timer ran out. I won my game of Quarrel in the end though despite their ‘help’. With so few games like this on Xbox Live I genuinely can’t wait for it to launch later in the year.

Kate and I quit while we were ahead and ran for the nearest restaurant and bottle of wine we could get our hands on and retreated from the world of gaming for a bit… well at least until later, when we sat up all night watching our mates play Street Fighter IV, obviously.