Strandfall

Strandfall is a solarpunk orienteering larp for 20-30 players inspired by Stalker, Death Stranding, Eclipse, Station Eleven, made in the Nordic tradition.

It’s made by Experimental Social Scene, a collective that re-enchants the world through embodied, technology-assisted play consisting of Adrian Hon and Alex Macmillan; we also had help from veteran larp designer Juhana Pettersson.

What’s unusual about Strandfall is that we’re building our handheld spatial computers for real. They contain a low-power, long-range radio for mesh networking beyond cellular and wifi service, a GPS radio, accelerometer and compass, a small ePaper display, all housed in a custom 3D-printed enclosure designed to be mounted on a standard camera tripod.

Players will deploy them across the park to create a network, use them to forecast the invisible storms, relay that information back to players at the base, and then track and even “storm chase” them while in scanning mode. Others might use them like surveyors, pinpointing the effects of past experiments in the park or discovering the boundaries of a mysterious Stalker-like exclusion zone.

Crucially, around 1/3 of players will remain at our base camp, acting as a kind of mission control – so they will not be expected to walk or jog during the game itself!