Now Play This 2025 review – the end of an era of experimental game design

Somerset House, LondonAfter 10 fun-packed years, it’s a wrap for the UK’s biggest celebration of indie, communal gameplay. But the folk games at the heart of this year’s edition have now filtered into the mainstream, from Taskmaster to The TraitorsWhen she was a child growing up in Adelaide, Australia, Holly Gramazio made up a game with her friend Summer. The two girls would lie back on swings with their eyes closed. When someone made too much noise nearby, they’d sit to attention and yell as loudly as they could: “Don’t wake me up!” The game captured a child’s view of grownups and their irksome inconsistencies – the self-defeating idea, or perhaps threat, that an adult could scream themselves awake amid their stated efforts to remain asleep. It was a co-operative game: the two girls “won” if they shouted in unison. If only one yelled, they lost. “This is the first game I remember playing,” records Gramazio in the printed guide (which also doubles as a delicious compendium of folk games) for the final Now Play This festival of experimental game design.It’s wrapping up “for the same reasons a lot of festivals wrap up”, she writes in a blog post marking its closure. “Sooner or later you need to find a way to make it more sustainable… Or if you can’t do that, you have to go: well, we had a fun time but that’s enough.” Continue reading...

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