Granny’s Backyard

INTERACTIVE GAME INSTALLATION, 2012

KAJAKKLUBBEN [DK]

Granny’s Backyard provides a playground that mimics the experience of playing in the dirt, puddles and shrubberies of grandma’s garden where your only limit is your imagination. Create, make, jump, swim and play as you watch day turn to night. Granny’s Backyard is an interactive toy which explores the boundaries between playing games and creating games. When interacting with the installation you can create your own games and play with your friends. You move the physical blocks around to create the game world that your digital character is living inside. Blue blocks turn into water, green blocks into plants, and brown blocks into ground; you can combine them in any sort of way making trees, clouds, water plants, underwater plants, flying platforms, and so on. The character can be controlled with the arcade gamepad and you can make your own challenges in the game or you can play more people changing the game world as the character moves around. Anybody from kids to adults can play, and you can just play the last game that somebody made, try to modify it or clear the table and start all over.

"“Granny’s Backyard is designed so that you can also watch other people play and still get some of the experience. It’s an installation that explores the boundaries between playing games and creating games. The installation is a game, but it’s also a game making tool. You create the game as you play. You build your own digital game world of physical wooden blocks, decide on your own goals and rules while playing. You can not only build your own games, you can also share them with the world and publish them on an webpage so that your friends can play them.”"

—kajakklubben [dk]