• Digital Business Solutions

    We build digital platforms for the charity, arts and environmental sectors. We provide integrated digital business solutions that deliver to your business needs.
    Read More
  • Ignite Liverpool

    Defnet Media is a partner in delivering Ignite Liverpool. We believe in the importance of knowledge sharing across all sectors so we have invested our time in Ignite Liverpool.
    Read More
  • Streaming Live events in Liverpool

    Would you like to add streamed video to your event in Liverpool be it a conference, seminar, Press Conference or Live Music Event then we can help you.
    Read More
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

Welcome to the Help Desk

Please use the articles below to help set up your website or to help you solve a problem you might have. These aren't extensive but we will continue to add to them.

Tuesday, 23 July 2013 12:03

2.8 Hours Later: Asylum - Immersive Game Returns to Liverpool

Written by
Rate this item
(0 votes)

28 hoursAward-winning game designers, Slingshot, are marking 'the year of the zombie' by announcing the launch of Asylum, the sequel to their smash hit urban chase game, 2.8 Hours Later.

The game, now in its fourth year, has undergone a full rewrite from Slingshot's motley crew of award-winning writers and game designers. Complete with an all new story, characters and game structure as it embarks on its second national tour of the UK, including dates in Liverpool on 26th & 27th July.

Did you know you have to undergo extensive training to be a Zombie in this game - it does look so cool. Ed.

 In addition, Slingshot will be deploying for the first time their prototype bio-sensing technology, to measure the impact the game has on players, enabling the team to draw up fear maps that will aid game design and route planning.

In 2.8 Hours Later: Asylum, the infection is at pandemic stage and UK cities are on lock down, isolated by the Government from the zombie-infected badlands around them. When these measures fail, the authorities abandon the city, and the once safe zone becomes a prison, overrun with zombies, vigilantes and scavengers.

In Asylum, it’s not just the zombies who are out to get you. The Government is trying to quarantine the infected, which introduces some tough choices for players. If your nearest and dearest get bitten, do you hand them over, or do you try to protect them?

These new threats engage players on a deeper emotional level, forcing them to question who the real monsters are in this post-apocalyptic scenario.

The first iteration of 2.8 Hours Later, in 2010, reflected on the profound social changes brought by of the formation of the coalition government and the cuts in public services they promised. The new, darker narrative of Asylum reflects the social impact of the last four years of austerity and recession, as poverty and hopelessness become chronic.

Slingshot co-founder and director, Simon Evans, said: “We felt it was the right time to give the game an overhaul. On one level, we’ve had to introduce new safety features and so wanted to re-design the fear factor to counter that. But we also wanted to address the deeper economic and political crisis the country is facing. The zombie apocalypse was inspired by a return to Tory cuts and the misery they brought. Now we’re almost four years on and we’re still in recession. The zombie infection is the recession, and the culpability, corruption, greed and violence it engenders is the world we live in now.”

The introduction of Asylum comes as zombies are hitting the headlines in 2013 with the imminent release of World War Z as well as other zombie films, Warm Bodies and RIPD, and the increasing interest in the genre, illustrated by the rise of other zombie-related pastimes, such as fitness classes.

The national tour, which starts out in Nottingham, will also take in Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh at the rate of a new city each month. There are plans to tour wider in the UK later this year and also to take the game to the USA, the birthplace of street game festivals, in 2014.

With a huge Facebook and Twitter following, 2.8 Hours Later is at the forefront of a burgeoning trend for such games, which started in America and has seen festivals spring up from Cardiff to Toronto. Since its first staging in Bristol in 2010, the game’s popularity has spread via social media and word of mouth, and players have actively petitioned its creators to bring the zombie menace to their home towns.

Slingshot is working on a range of increasingly sophisticated immersive games. The company, which grew its turnover by 400% in 2012 thanks to the success of 2.8 Hours Later, was commissioned to create a game for the Animated Exeter Festival (18 – 23 February 2013). Time Winders uses RFID technology to enable players to interact with smart objects dotted at secret locations across Exeter’s city centre and teamed up Slingshot's writers with multi-award winning and highly coveted children's author Philip Reeve.

Time Winders, and another new game, Cargo, both use technology developed by the University of Nottingham’s Mixed Reality Lab, as part of the EPSRC supported Orchid Project, which is exploring how human interaction with computers is set to change as computation increasingly pervades the modern world.

And for Jekyll 2.0, which they’re producing as part of REACT’s Books and Print Sandbox, Slingshot has teamed up with Anthony Mandal of Cardiff University to create an interactive adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel, Jekyll and Hyde, which is driven by the player’s bio-data. Their sweat, breath and heart rate will animate the world around them, triggering doors to lock and lights to go off.

Game producer and Slingshot co-founder, Simon Johnson, said: “It’s great to be able to use some of these technologies to create games with. They enhance the games by introducing some otherwise almost impossible elements. But the games are still not about the technology. In Time Winders when you’re busy shooting down falling bombs, solving riddles or searching for Rune bones you’re just immersed in playing. The destination is engaging with new experiences; the tech just gets us there.”

A full list of locations and dates can be found here: http://2.8hourslater.com/

20% DISCOUNT CODE: middlezombie20 

2.8 Hours Later is an immersive game, where players lose themselves in the apocalyptic scenario of a city under siege from zombie attackers. Armed with no more than their wits and a map, they have to navigate their way across a city at dusk to find Asylum – a survivor camp, encountering groups of survivors and bloodthirsty zombies en route.http://2.8hourslater.com/

Since its debut at Bristol's Interesting Games Festival, Igfest, in 2010, 2.8 Hours Later has been played by more than 25,000 players in Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester, as well as in its home town of Bristol.

Keep an eye on the Facebook page for latest news and updates:http://www.facebook.com/2.8HoursLater and watch @ukcoalition for some interesting political developments...

Igfest is Bristol's pervasive games festival, which takes place annually in the centre of the city. Http://igfest.org and is run by Slingshot.

 

 

Read 2064 times Last modified on Friday, 26 July 2013 11:47

From the sonic art archive

Kaffe Matthews -

August Rain In New York Doorways

Click to listen and for a free download

  

 

Recorded Live at Leaf Cafe on 4th May

Login

Please Log in