Honeyslug

Glob was a game that my friend Dan and I made back in the summer of ‘08, for a collaborative exhibition at the Jerwood Space in London. The idea of the exhibition was that a number of artists would each work with a collaborator who was not from an art  background. Dan chose me, and we decided to make a videogame.

We started by going to the pub a couple of times to kick ideas around, and fairly soon set up a blog to discuss our ideas. You can find it here, but it may contain spoilers, so it’s probably worth playing the game first.

http://barkwayraddow.wordpress.com

In one of our early meetings, Dan told me about the world of Glob, which he had created as a number of small painted scenes on an old corkboard he had rescued from a hospital bin. The more he told me about the different inhabitants of Glob, the more it seemed like a great setting for a game, and we gradually moved in that direction. I won’t say too much more about the game itself here.

We were conscious that the game would need to be installed in the  gallery space (alongside other, more traditional works by the other groups – drawings, photographs and sculpture), and were concerned that we didn’t want Glob to feel too ‘computery’. To this end, we created a ’set’ from cardboard boxes and wood which would hide as much of the computer as possible – only the mouse and the monitor screen were visible.

The exhibition itself went well. At the private view it was being played almost constantly, by a wide variety of people. My favourite was a couple in their 60s who played through Glob to completion, helping each other along the way, and having a great time. When I went to speak to them afterwards, they told me it was the first videogame either of them had ever played. We also received a favourable review on Radio 4’s ‘Saturday Review’ programme.






You can play the game here: http://www.gimme5games.com/index.jsp?id=glob

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