Renga: 100-player laser pointer game

While waiting around Saturday night for 10:50pm showing of "Looper", which I highly recommend you go see, my girlfriend and I stumbled across the grounds of IndieCade 2012.

IndieCade (i.e., International Festival of Independent Games) is:

"the only stand-alone independent-focused game festival in the nation. It is open to the industry and to the public. Events include a festival workshops, keynotes, and family-focused activities, meet-and-greets with game creators, hands-on gameplay with a GameWalk, live games, Night Games and numerous social events."

One of the night games they had running when we got there was a fascinating project called "Renga". It is a 100-person cooperative laser pointer game, wherein the players are collectively building a spacecraft and then protecting it from various enemies and natural hazards. While I have no idea how the programming actually works, actions in the game appear to be based on the intensity of the lasers (i.e., the more pointers focused on one point of the screen triggers an action there).

Initially players are harvesting resources from asteroids for use in building their space ship, which involves walling in floating elements (e.g., storage, engines and shields) and then connecting them to each other, all under a time constraint. Once time runs out, the ship spends a round being bombarded by outside forces, which can be destroyed by hovering laser pointers at specific points around them. If they survive the whole cycle is repeated, with the players eventually reaching the final boss stage.

It looks like a lot of fun and I'd love to get a chance to try it out with a bunch of friends. Check out some videos below of the game in action.