Plug in and Play was a local festival that me and David Hayward were approached by The National Videogame Museum, Children's Capital of Culture and Rotherham Council about creatively co-producing. We worked together to design a trail of nature themed games to be shown around the town centre.

This was an incredible project to work on, David and I designed and produced a number of playful, approachable games to bring joy, creativity and wonder:

Runner Bees (Forge Island) 

Grab your bucket, fill it with pollen and race around the track to create simple mosaics of flowers cooperatively or competitively!

We needed a large game to fill the space of Forge Island, so made a racing game using ball pool balls, wooden frames and interlocking foam tiles. The finishing touch was the Vestaboard, a modern departure lounge flipboard for displaying the flowers.

Frog Tipping (Rotherham Minster)  

A mischievous frog has dumped litter in the River Don to cross over! Work together or competitively with fishing rods to clean up the river. 

This was hosted in Rotherham Minster so needed to be a project which respected the space but was still playful. We kept the game non-digital using magnetic fishing rods/litter (all lasercut designs) and integrated the game into the space.

Radiant Vines (All Saints Square) 

Tilt a watering can to shine light onto a weaving of glowing vines. Let the vines grow long enough and flowers will bloom. 

This was easily the most technically ambitious project. A suite of custom hardware was fabricated for displaying multiple LED installations simultaneously in a weatherproof, portable and modular box, allowing 6 LED ropes to display.  

Narrative Toolbox (Grimm & Co)

Explore the digital version of The Emporium of Stories and create your own character and narrative in the space! 

Grimm wanted something grounded in storytelling and integrating their character, Robin Rex, so their space was reconstructed in the web based narrative tool Bitsy for kids to explore and design their own characters within. 

Shutterbug (Flux) 

Wiggle the antennae of the shutterbug to take photographs of various insects against the backdrop of the Rotherham countryside! 

We commissioned the team behind Shutterbug to adapt their game to feature local landmarks and we fabricated a playful custom controller featuring double joysticks. 

Along with the games created by us, there was also a number of local collaborators who ran experiences at the remaining stops of the trail: 

Tales and Terrain (Riverside House)

Jim Thompson's wonderful narrative map game invited players to populate a map with coloured stamps such as trees, rivers, leaves and other natural elements. Participants can also hang labels with stories about regions/landmarks on the map. 

Joust (Forge Island/Boston Castle) 

The National Videogame Museum bought along Joust, an interactive but safe fencing game that was showcased in the amphitheatre at Boston Castle and inside Forge Island. 

• Actual Reality Arcade (Catcliffe Glass Cone) - Matthew Harrison and Lee Marsh delivered a variety of physical depictions of traditional arcade games at the site of a historic glass kiln in Catcliffe as the opening activity for the festival. 
• Rotherham United E-Sports Bus (All Saints Square) - Rotherham United provided a colouring station for kids to create their own football and team crests along with their E-Sports bus to play games inside.

A special thank you to everyone who helped deliver the event and if you have any interest or questions about the installations produced, feel free to get in touch.