This large-scale sculptural game was designed especially for the public entre-foyer of the Gaîté. Five lace-like steel panels with patterns reminiscent of cellular structures are the setting for an intricate and surprisingly fast-paced game. As two opponents place their pieces on the hanging surface of the sculpture, they also must take pieces away from other groups of players who are in the midst of their own game sessions nearby. Pozzi and Zimmerman are well-known for their large and elegant physical games that cross game design and architecture to sculpt beautiful spaces and engender provocative social play.
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Metal panels manufactured by Caino Design.

The Building wants to play along ! Interact in unexpected ways with familiar architecture as The Building Is... transforms the Gaîté lyrique into a giant game extending throughout every floor. A series of embedded physical-action games allows the building to get to know you. In each game you interact with one of the building’s senses : Listening, Smell, Touch, and Sight. Finally, after forming an impression of you through your actions, the building will tell you what sort of assistant it wants you to be.
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The technology of The Building Is... is built entirely upon open source platforms and libraries, including:

Ruby On Rails, Sinatra, and assorted libraries (all under the MIT license).

Processing (an open project, copyright 2001-2004 MIT, copyright 2004-2011 Ben Fry and Casey Reas), along with Minim and Fullscreen libraries.

Arduino hardware and software, including the TLC5940 Library.

Telephony is provided by Twilio.com.

Fred & Company has transformed the Gaîté’s 21-meter-long projection wall into an animated interactive instrument-machine. Eight glowing, responsive “planets” are echoed in mirrors. By moving around the floor space in front of these planets, visitors can mix new musical compositions and trigger entrancing visual effects. And yet, these planets hold some secrets. Coordinate movements together as a group to discover certain mystery formations.
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Inspired by the history of the Gaîté lyrique, Daily tous les jours, with composer Krista Muir, has created an interactive theatrical space which invites the visitor to slip, for a brief moment, into the costumes of iconic characters in an operetta. The small room is transformed into a multi-layered stage, and every player can adopt a part in the performance. Props are yours to jump into the game. Can you learn your part before the curtain falls again ?
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The Audio room has become The Elephant in the Room, a sentient creature that changes its behavior as a result of visitors’ actions. Its voice and behavior evolve daily, influenced by your movement on the pressure-sensitive floor. Perhaps some intrepid visitors will learn how to cajole the creature. Or perhaps the elephant is untamable.

Trente pas entre terre et ciel is a modification of the classic children’s game hopscotch, designed for two players. The game offers physical and social challenges to the players, such as hopping together in synchronization,or offering the other player a spontaneous compliment. The game evokes Joue le Jeu’s theme of game design as a creative interplay with physical space, architecture, and human action.
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Electricity Comes from Other Planets was built with openFrameworks.

This sprawling installation conceived in collaboration with surreal sculptor Thu Tran and performing artist Neil Fridd features Babycastles’ usual array of lo-fi and hacked experimental videogame madness, with a twist : Meowton is both a cat-themed game town, and an environment exploring large scale custom controller design for physical game play. Encounter games featuring felines via bizarre integrated controllers, inspired by the magnificent play patterns of cats themselves.
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Meowton uses Autohotkey and JoyToKey.

The visually sensuous multi-player game Krautscape is an action-packed race in which the track emerges dynamically in front of the lead player during the course of the race, creating a completely original and unique gaming experience for every race and every player. Team Krautscape includes award-winning designer Mario von Rickenbach (Mirage), and Micheal Burgdorfer.

Ibb and obb is a cooperative game in which two players must work together to find their way through opposite sides of a world where gravity flips depending on the direction of the ground. Players can move through portals from one side of the world to the other in order to figure out puzzles and avoid obstacles, but their fate is bound : when one player dies, so does the other! Ibb and obb was created by Sparpweed NL, a small game studio based in Rotterdam, founded by Roland Ijzermans and Richard Boeser, focusing on original gameplay and atmosphere.

Fader is a game about changing space, abstracted reality and escape. It presents a simple yet challenging puzzle world in a poetic retro visual aesthetic, in which a single player controls multiple simultaneous characters in superimposed translucent dimensions. Chris Makris is a visual artist and video game designer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

FLX is an original multiplayer footrace game, produced by Submarine Channel, and created by multi-media artist Han Hoogerbrugge, of Hotel and Modern Living fame, with game designer Sander van der Vegte. Using the Kinect, each player controls a character that is linked, within the game, to three other racers by an elastic band. The goal of the game is to make it to the end of a track while engaging with the oddest of obstacles. The trick : in order to move forward, players have to simultaneously collaborate and compete.
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Ninja Shadow Warrior is a photo-booth arcade game. Players must use their ninja magic to hide, by "becoming" objects – in other words, using their bodies to fill out the shape of an on-screen object as accurately as possible. The game promotes face-to-face cooperative interaction through strategy, as multiple ninjas will be able to fill out more details in the object silhouettes. Ninja Shadow Warrior engages all age groups – kids and adults play equally passionately !
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Ninja Shadow Warrior was built with Processing and Shiffman's OpenKinect Processing Library.

In Fez you are Gomez, a two-dimensional creature on a voyage of discovery into the mysterious third dimension. The game has been lauded not only for its pitch-perfect nostalgia for games of the 8 and 16 bit eras, but also for an astonishingly complex system of codes, puzzles, and clues that delighted players worldwide. Conceived by outspoken game designer Phil Fish and developed by Polytron Corporation, Fez has won multiple awards including the Grand Jury Prize at IndieCade 2011 and the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival 2012.
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Papo y Yo is the autobiographical fable of Quico, a young boy living in the favelas with his robot companion Lula and his dangerous best friend Monster. This magical realist adventure is based on game designer Vander Caballero’s experiences growing up with an alcoholic father. After leaving EA in 2009, he formed independent studio Minority Games to pursue his vision of making a personal game which expresses meaning through gameplay.
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Set on an uninhabited island, The Witness is an exploration-puzzle game developed by Number None, and headed by noted game veteran Jonathan Blow, designer of the internationally acclaimed game Braid. In developing the settings for the game, Blow collaborated with architects FOURM design and David Fletcher Studio to create unique buildings and landscape which are at once plausible, meaningfully detailed, and narratively rich.
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The Unfinished Swan asks you to explore the unseen. The game begins in a completely white space where you can throw paint to splatter your surroundings and reveal the contours of the world around you. The game first saw light in 2008 as a gameplay prototype video developed by students at the University of Southern California, led by Creative Director Ian Dallas. Developer Giant Sparrow is a small video game company in Santa Monica, California.
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