Critical Hit: not just something that happens when the random number generator in your favourite Japanese Role-Playing Game decides to grace you and your characters with a temporary (and often obscene) boost in your damage output. I’m here today to tell you about a different kind of Critical Hit; a kind that can only be achieved when the perfect confluence of talent, passion, and irrepressible vivacity occurs under the auspices of a break-neck schedule of game-creation jams. For the second year in a row, we here at the Centre for Technoculture, Art and Games have been blessed with just such a concatenation. Clearly, a manifestation as auspicious as this could only be named after the most hallowed of game omens: The Critical Hit.
(All pseudo-religious revelry aside, you can find out more about Critical Hit 2014 at their spiffy-lookin’ website: www.criticalhitmontreal.ca/about/)
This year’s Critical Hit is already off and running, and since the participants are doing what will now forever be known as “slow jams,” their first game prototypes will be available for play this Thursday at the TAG/Critical Hit 5a7, and we’d like to invite you all to come try them out! This week’s theme, inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, is about communicating the subjective experience of space. Participants were first asked to think about their own hometowns and their experiences there – in terms of sights, smells, sounds, and people. Come see what they’ve managed to create in under 32 hours this Thursday!
We hope to see you all there!
What: Slow Jam Slam Session
When: Thursday, June 12th, from 5-7pm
Where: Hexagram Game Lab, EV 11.425, 1515 St. Catherine W.
Who: Doesn’t want to play awesome Slow Jam Games? (Everyone is Welcome!)