In the UK, there’s a very popular TV show called Taskmaster. In it, comedians have to complete insane and – a lot of the time – pointless tasks. It can be things like ‘Make the most exotic sandwich’ or ‘Impress this town mayor.’
On one series of the show, contestants were challenged to make a video game into a real-life game. The comedians did well. One made a real-life Mario Kart in the driveway, another made a hilarious recreation of GTA.
All this got us thinking: what other games could you recreate in real life at home? And how would you go about making them?
Classic games are fun to play – clear in how they continue to be popular – but have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in them? Now, hopefully, you can have a go at living a few of them in real life.
Pacman
Photo by Ahmed_Altamimi on Pixabay
Pacman is a classic game that is easy to recreate in real life. Find an outdoor court – like a basketball or netball court – and take along some chalk.
If it’s a public place, check first that you are okay to use it and draw on the court with chalk. Bring water to clean the chalk off afterward.
Draw random, joined-up lines on the court and some big shaded areas. They could be rectangles or circles. Even triangles, if you want to go crazy.
This is your Pacman court.
Pick who will be ghosts and who will be Pacman. Then, the ghosts go to a shaded area together, and Pacman goes to stand on a line.
Then: run.
As long as you stay on the lines, you have free rein. It’s as simple as that: when a ghost catches Pacman, the game is over.
Keep talking and nobody explodes
Keep talking and nobody explodes had a giant boom in popularity a few years ago, but it’s still a good game to play every now and then. For those who might not be familiar, Keep talking and nobody explodes is an online game where you have to solve puzzles to avoid a bomb exploding.
This is a pretty easy one to recreate in real life.
All you need are a bunch of puzzles. You can easily make ones like the letter codes with word unscramblers or the number ones with online calculators.
The bomb defusal manual for the game is online, so if you aren’t a creative type, you can just steal their puzzles.
One thing that should be said when making this game at home: do not get a real bomb! That’s a bit too real. Plus, you’ll get in a bunch of trouble with the police.
If you like the drama of the bomb blowing up at the end when you don’t complete the tasks in time, you could get yourself a different kind of bomb, like a confetti bomb, or, if you need something cheaper, you could always use a water balloon as your bomb.
Snake
Photo by James Hamilton-Martin on Flickr
Did anyone else have Snake on their phone as a kid? For anyone younger than fifteen, Snake was a great game, usually on a phone (but also online now) where you moved a snake around a square. Sounds exciting, right?
Don’t worry: there’s more. You could run the snake into small circles, which, when the snake consumed, made the snake grow. Sadly, if the snake hit its own body, it would die, and it would be game over for the player.
Of course, as the snake consumes more circles and grows bigger, it gets harder to avoid the snake’s own body. So is the premise of the game!
To recreate Snake in real life, you need a big group of people.
First, set out a grid in your garden or a big indoor space. You could do this with masking tape. You want clear horizontal and vertical lines. This will allow the snake to know where it’s allowed to go.
One person from the group starts as the head of the snake. It can move along the lines in straight horizontal or vertical movement.
At some point, a new person joins – static – somewhere on the grid. They are the first circle.
The snake should then go to the circle and “consume” it. In the online game, this would mean the snake grows longer. To represent this in real life, the person who took the place of the circle should join the snake. They can do this by putting their hands on the shoulders of the person in front.
Keep doing this – people being circles then joining the snake – until the snake runs into its own body.
For this to work, everyone in the snake chain must move just as the person in front of them did. Stick to the grid, and the game should work!
You’ve won the game if you get the whole group into the snake, and you don’t run into your long chain.
This in-person recreation is great for big meet-ups or youth groups.
Escape rooms
What came first: online escape rooms or real-life escape rooms? Who knows. What we do know is that in-person escape rooms are very popular. As are online escape rooms. In-person escape rooms are, however, very expensive.
But making an escape room at home is pretty easy. You need a good brain for clues and a bunch of random stuff for props. Oh, and a room that you can use to house your escape room.
As with online escape rooms, you can theme your own personal escape room in whatever way you want. You could even have a gaming-themed escape room.
A good escape room should have different sorts of puzzles. It’s good to have physical challenges as well as mental challenges. It’s also important not to make it too hard, especially if you set a time limit.
The tricky thing with making your own escape room is that if you make it yourself, you can’t really play it. After all, you know all the secrets. So, either make it for someone else and enjoy being the game master or ask someone else to make one for you.
