//Come Out & Play Festival: June 4-6, New York

From June 4-6 you won’t be limited to the confines of your living room or arcade to play your favorite games.  At the Come Out & Play Festival players get the chance to target human “asteroids” in a real-life interpretation of Asteroids and catch falling “bombs” in live-action remake of the Atari classic Kaboom!  Players will also track each other in high-tech hide-and-seek games like HALI and Geo Melee.  These games break video games free of TVs and tiny cellphone screens and return the action to the great outdoors.

Of course not every game requires high-tech gadgetry.  The festival also features new sports like Field Crumpets where players swing giant red plastic bats to whack soccer balls in fast-paced new sport.  They will also take to the streets around the Gowanus Canal under cover of night for a strategic water-gun battle called CounterSquirt.

The festival includes family-friendly fare like the Walt Disney Imagineering team’s Unwritten Storybook in which players compete to create the best fairy-tale around Prospect Park.  Exercise your engineering muscles with in The 2010 First Annual Paper Plane Derby which takes flight inside the Brooklyn Lyceum.  Or plunge into a life-sized maze in Cross My Heart + Hope to Die.

And for those looking for more debauched fun, get in on the action with bAR Pong.  A live-action mixture of the video game classic Pong and the party game Beer Pong.  Or grab the chance to hunt your friends in Humans vs. Zombies.

The Come Out & Play Festival takes over the Brooklyn Lyceum from June 4-6 and spreads out around Park Slope, Prospect Park and the Gowanus Canal.  Stop by the opening party on Friday night to play a slew of party games and register for games.  Then spend Saturday and Sunday outdoors exploring Brooklyn and playing.  Interested in new field sports?  Jump into the action on the field behind festival partner, The Old Stone House.  Game registration is on a first-come-first serve basis, so stop by the festival HQ at the Lyceum to grab a spot in games you like.

Now in it’s fifth year the Come Out & Play Festival continues to grow and explore new ways to play.  This year the festival features a pirate radio station run by Nonchalance which will bring an interactive game to the radio waves and keep you updated on the action from games around the festival.  Each year the festival draws hundreds of designers from around the world and thousands of players from across the country together for three-days of experimental play.

If you can’t make it to Brooklyn this June take heart!  Come Out & Play is working with IndieCade to bring a series of some of the best games from the last five years of Come Out & Play to Culver City in October for the IndieCade festival.  Players at IndieCade will have the chance to get in on the street game action, playing everything from new sports to high-tech hide & seek.

Details
Dates: June 4-6, 2010
Location: Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 4th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (right off the R train at Union Street)
Cost: Free
Registration: Stop by the Lyceum to reserve a spot in games
URL: http://www.comeoutandplay.org

Festival Sponsors:
Nonchalance
SCVNGR
NYU Game Center
ESI Design
Giant Robot
Walt Disney Imagineering
Brooklyn Lyceum
Old Stone House
Gigantic Mechanic