While flipping through the mammoth
TIFF Programme Book (or tome, some might say), no doubt on your way to the
Vanguard or
Midnight Madness section, you may have noticed a page tucked just before
Future Projections touting that
TIFF’s gaming & new media initiative
TIFF Nexus would be presenting something called
RENGA at this year’s festival. But what exactly is
RENGA?
The official copy promises “the world’s first 100-player co-op laser
game” with further claims as “a breakthrough in big-screen interaction”,
but what does that all really mean you ask: “Is this a video-game? An
interactive movie? Lasers? Who’s got lasers? I wanna laser!”
Calm down, gentle reader, all will be explained.
RENGA
is a communal and collaborative gaming experience shared by 100 players
wielding laser-pointers at a movie theatre-size screen. It
is no TimePlay multiplex shtick; this is a genuine interactive gaming
experience that’s both challenging, engaging and even tells a story – a
story that you, the audience, shapes.
The set-up is as simple as those of old-school arcade games like
Galaga or
Space Invaders, but fused with the strategic mechanics of games like
Civilization:
armed with a laser-pointer (provided to you at the screening), you and
ninety-nine fellow laser warriors are tasked with building and managing
the resources of a battered spaceship, whilst defending it from an
encroaching on-screen alien force. Broken up into discrete
rounds, the audience must work as a team, communicating with each other
and collaborating together on and off screen, in order to ensure their
ship’s survival. The result has been described as a kind of
improvisational dance.... with
freakin' laser beams.
Best
yet, RENGA isn't aimed strictly at hardcore gamers (don't let all this
talk of 'resource management' scare you), every round of the game is
monitored by a “game jockey” who paces the game out based on the
audiences unique decisions and performance, ensuring that the game does
not become so difficult (or too easy). And even better, the game jockeys
will be RENGA creators Adam Russell and John Sear, who will also be on
hand to answer your questions on how it all works, and what we can
expect in the future!
RENGA already
knocked socks off at SXSW and a number of game festivals worldwide, and
on Sept. 14th @ 9:30pm and Sept. 15th @ 12:45pm Toronto audiences will
get their first chance to discover an incredible foray into the future
of interactive cinematic entertainment.
As the creators themselves pitch: Arrive as an audience, leave as a team.
RENGA times and locations:
Fri., Sept. 14, 9:30:
TIFF Bell Lightbox 3
Sat., Sept. 15, 12:45: TIFF Bell Lightbox 4
Peter Kuplowsky is a Toronto film curator, producer, writer, intermittent TwitchFilm.net contributor and hat-enthusiast. A
programmer for the Toronto After Dark Film Festival since its inception
in 2005, his other significant cine-endeavors include co-producing
Astron-6's MANBORG, the coordination of director Edgar Wright’'s Toronto
editions of The Wright Stuff in 2009 and 2010 and being featured in Michael Paul Stephenson'’s Best Worst Movie
(2010). Peter Kuplowsky currently works for TIFF Nexus, a gaming and new media project, at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
