Games, puns, dancing
Yesterday was action-packed: we went to the Edinburgh "Interactive" Festival, which was basically a conference with a public section demoing various games. In the basement were the finalists from the "Dare to be digital" student games development competition. We spent a good hour or or two wandering around playing their demos and talking to the developers. Quite a varied bunch; some were just terrible, quite a few were unimaginative platform games, and some were really impressively polished and should be published. Ones I liked:

- "Grav" a first-person puzzle game with a "magnet gun" (vide Portal), in the HL2 engine. The sole developer appeared to be a 12-year old boy, with his mum enthusiastically flyering people around the exhibition.
- "Boro-toro", a puzzle platform game where you have to move items around with the mouse (or Wiimote) to enable your character to cross the level. Well polished with fun plinky background music. Reminded me of Lemmings and The Incredible Machine.
- "World of Champloo": silly name, most polished game (and publicity material) of the lot. Colour-themed arena battle with fantasy RPG influences.
- "VegeMe": think Qix crossed with Katamari Damarcy. Very kawaii.

Then we went to Tim Vine: Punslinger. This guy is great. We were having a look at things to go to on youtube, and Tim reminded us very much of Tommy Cooper. His entire show is an hour of puns :)

Finally we rounded off the day with an evening at "Hemingway's Havana", a Cuban dance show. Amazingly energetic, beatiful, fantastic fun. I've never before come out of a show with so much more energy than I went in!