Nature's Light and Shadow Inspire New Video Game...Plus Call for Video Game Designers!

Annually at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, experimental game play workshops are held where video designers from all over the country convene to showcase their new games or works in progress. Here, we highlight the work of collaborators Scott Anderson and Steve Swink who have created Shadow Physics. This video game"puzzle" features a main character, a shadow, who crawls on walls and ceilings and leaps, reacting to other shadows in order to make images in the "real" world take action. You can even manipulate the light in order to create alternative shadows, changing your strategy to win. It's deceptively simple; like Spiderman meets Einstein. A transcript of the entire YouTube interview can be found at Indie Game Pod with space for comments.

If you or anyone you know is a video game designer, we suggest you look into the Game Play Workshops Call for Participation for 2009. They're looking for a variety of innovative game ideas. While they caution there are some models they "don't deal with," they also allow that: "The above guidelines are vague and incomplete, as new and experimental things will by definition fall outside existing preconceptions."

In the meantime, we look forward to the launch of Anderson and Swink's game, and we will be happy to hire a 10 year old to explain it to us!