On October 9th of 2010, after dark fell in Culver City, I participated in a magnificent big game as part of IndieCade. This game was Human Asteroid. Seriously, think of the old game Asteroids but instead of rocks moving around in a physical space, it’s people. And we were lit up with blink-capable LED shirts. The result is beautiful.
At first I thought being an asteroid would not be something I’d be okay to do. I haven’t been a performer of any sort in many years and I didn’t want people watching me while I blinked in the dark. But after I got into the cool shirt costume and played with it for a few minutes, I stopped thinking about it as, “people will stare at me,” and felt like an integrated part of the game, which ended up far outweighing my self-esteem issues. Practicing in the shirts before we actually had the players playing in the same space with us was a magical experience. Even with all the directions on how the game works (which I’ll get to soon), it doesn’t seem brilliant until you’re doing it live. When players got to play in their shopping cart-style ship and begin shooting at us, there was a general mood of fun. Even though we were mindless automatons as part of the game, there was still anticipation of whether or not the players would win or the asteroids would defeat them. Players had LOTS of fun engaging in a light up ship with light up helmets and knowing that people were actually creating the experience for them seemed to make it extra exciting and draw in more players from the crowd that quickly formed around our playing field.
The Rules.
To be a human asteroid has simple and, most importantly, uniform rules, so I’ll start with these rules. Asteroids start out in groups of four, hands on your fellow asteroids’ shoulders, and move very slowly, with a general leader when you bounce against a border or another four-human asteroid. When someone is shot, a four-person asteroid breaks apart into two sets of two-person asteroids who move a bit faster now, more like a slow dance than a slow crawl. After that, the two people break apart and move much more quickly with arms crossed “I-Dream-Of-Jeannie” style. Once shot in this mode, a human asteroid must turn off his or her light and remove themselves quickly from the playing field. This is the moment when an asteroid is no longer a mindless automaton and can root for the players or fellow asteroids from the sidelines and just enjoy the game. If an asteroid cluster or single asteroid collides with the ship at any point, the asteroid will shout out “BOOM!” and throw their arms up and turn on the blinking on their shirt (during normal game play, the light is solid). All other asteroids in the playing field (and generally outside of play, because this part is lots of fun!) will shout as well and mimic their fellow asteroid. The game is essentially on pause while the ship resets with a new life (or perhaps the game is now over) and all the human asteroids in the field wait to restart. The only rule for restarting (aside from changing your blinking lights back to solid when the game play resumes) is not to immediately rush back into the ship. This is also mostly for safety. Though it’s pretty simple to be a human asteroid, everyone must coordinate and practice together so that everyone works in what looks like a perfect group. This is definitely the hardest aspect of being a human asteroid volunteer – doing it all the same as everyone else consistently.
Players don’t have difficult rules, but they do have a higher level of responsibility for following the rules, as the ship can more easily hurt the participants of the game due to its size and weight. Players in this run through got two lives. There was a large crowd and giving too many lives to each set of players may have made each game too long to accommodate as many potential players as possible. There are two players per game. One is the shooter who sits inside the ship and shoots. The other is the captain of the ship who literally navigates in the play space – by pushing the ship around. Ammo is limited and if the shooter runs out, it costs a life to refill. If an asteroid crashes into the players, a life is lost and ammo is refilled to maximum while they get to reset somewhere in the playing field towards the middle. Asteroids pause when this occurs and do not leave their positions at the time of the crash, so the reset place is never exactly the same. The ship itself is lit up beautifully and a little larger than a shopping cart (which is the base of the ship!). Players get to wear helmets that light up as well so they are all a part of the game. The bullets are still not lit up, which is a shame, but it’s a technical issue that needs to be worked out because the launcher requires a special weight and may get jammed if the little nerf-style discs are painted or made heavier by lights or tape or any other similar idea.
The Design.
The design of this big game version of the original Asteroid is beautifully simplistic. It’s pretty much what you might think of if someone said “What if humans were the asteroids in the game Asteroid?” Of course, you might want to cue responders to that question with, “And it’s at night!” This way, people would probably think of bright lights on dark people for themselves. But the dance of it is something that seems like people might respond with if proposed the original question. Except, until Nick Fortugno came up with it, nobody ever asked that question. At least, nobody ever follow through on it. With great designs and costumes from Nick, Sam Strick, and Dave Warth (as listed on the IndieCade website in this project, whom I did not meet or know about until I looked up exact spellings of names), this big game was definitely a successful recreation of the original digital game. Both Nick and Sam who were at the event were very nice and very enthusiastic. They prioritized the safety of their asteroid volunteers as well as the fun of everyone else. It was wonderful to hear Sam talk about the design of the costumes and the ship, and it even gave me ideas for future projects of my own. The costume design was simple and brilliant. It’s clear that lots of time and hard work went into finding just the right pieces to the puzzle and then put them together in a way that created a perfect presentation. Designer Information from IndieCade 2010 Event Site.
The Performance.
It turns out to look something like this on the evening in which I participated as a Human Asteroid, though this is not from the same night.
A Trailer/Preview.
Actual Game Play with the crowd talking animatedly about it. *This was not the night of IndieCade, just a previous play.
The dancing lights in the dark draw crowds instantly and everybody wants to watch and participate in the game. When it’s clear the asteroids are having fun while communicating with each other in coordination (so no one gets hurt), people can’t help but be charmed by the experience: What is it they’re doing? They say “boing” when they hit the border! When they’re hit they break apart and still make sounds when they bump into each other and move in different directions. They all blink when they yell BOOM! What happened, did they hit the ship? Somehow, our coordination along with lights in the darkness made us a venue that was irresistible. And as much fun as it may have looked to others, it was at least double for me. Shouting “BOOM!” and throwing up our arms was lots of fun and I found myself really hoping I’d get to crash into the ship so I could instigate the lot of us all shouting, throwing up our arms, and blinking. I did get to, which was enormously fun, by the end of the night. Then, somehow, the night felt complete. Whether the players lost or won, they always had big grins and thanked us for being asteroids for them. I wanted to thank them constantly for playing so that we had a reason to be blinking and bouncing around! People seemed to really love the beauty of taking an old arcade classic and turning it into someone everyone could be immersed in together in the same physical space. I suppose that’s the beauty of big games in general, but there was something extra special about Human Asteroid. Maybe it was how a quarter of the crowd spontaneously starting humming the two notes that make up the music for the original, or maybe it was the way our blinking before we even got started (in pause mode) drew people from across the lot, but whatever precisely it was that drew each person into the crowd, the whole performance of it was what kept the crowd pretty solid for almost two full hours. Just watching my fellow human asteroid volunteers was magnificent and beautiful. I had a tremendous amount of fun and felt like I was getting this great light show. It didn’t matter if players won or lost, I wanted to cheer everyone on if I was out of play at the moment – during my “human” time. I found myself forgetting to be self-conscious and turning on my blinking lights to cheer when the game ended. I can honestly say that I haven’t had so much fun since my first trip to Disneyland last May, where I experienced the intense excitement of Disney that I hadn’t felt since my 12 year old trip to DisneyWorld in Florida. I felt like I was bursting with excitement in just the same way – I didn’t feel my feet getting tired or sore in my shoes and I never felt like it was time to stop.
The Final Review.
I’m not a critic in a magazine or internet site or anything, but on my own blog I get to be a critic if I want to. And I say Human Asteroid gets a 10/10! Five Stars! Here’s a 1-Up! I don’t know if players or spectators felt, or even could feel, quite as enthusiastic as me, but I know that they would all give it a high score for being fun and appealing from the enjoyment that was clear on their faces.