Created by Erik Burke & Lynn Maharas

Photos by Merlin

Pure, physical, augmented reality.

Ran Some, Ransom was created by Erik Burke & Lynn Maharas and won the “Best Use of Space” Award at Come Out & Play Festival 2009 in New York.

Teams of two are given special transparencies that they must use to decode a message as quickly as possible (in the original version to rescue a hostage).

Players do this by discovering the places on the playing field at which the outlines printed on the transparencies align perfectly with the architecture and signs in view through the transparencies. This is especially difficult as multiple outlines are printed onto each transparency in different colors. Once aligned, circles on the transparency point players to letters and numbers in the landscape (on signs or ads) that they assemble to form the code.

For the version at Kottbusser Tor, we created a single transparency encoding three viewpoints. Instead of having players start the game at any time (as it was played at COAP) we let loose the whole mob of players at once, introducing a new strategic element: teams watched each other carefully to quickly follow up on succesfully decoded viewpoints. The team that first transmitted the correct code via SMS won.

This is the transparency we used at Kottbusser Tor: