“Game variants: Try starting a game of Metakettle within a game of Metakettle. See how deep you can go. Or, for biology students, try a taxonomic variant of the game, where your group animal is only allowed to kettle other group animals in the same genus as your own. This should be especially fruitful for beetle enthusiasts.
Please let us know of any game reports – especially those within a kettling situation. We’ll update this page/site with those reports and I think this could even be the beginning of a new game genre: Games in Detention.
About Metakettle
After taking part in a game design jam here in Cambridge and attempting (and failing) to make his first computer game, Andrew reverted to paper and pens and came up with “Metakettle” to respond to the theme of ‘cops’
Metakettle is, quite simply, a game about being kettled, to play when you’re being kettled, to pass the time until you’re not being kettled any more. It’s a group game, so all you need is other people; no dice or anything. You pick an animal, shout that animal name constantly and try and recruit other “players”. When you have enough people, you capture more players by completely encircling – or kettling – them. They then join your animal team and it’s onwards and upwards until you’ve kettled the entire group. At that point you realise the cops have won and you start again.
It’s an attempt to diffuse a potentially confrontational situation but it might also keep your mind off the fact you’re being illegally detained in the street without access to basic amenities like toilets, shelter or water.
We produced two versions of the game to print out. One to frame and put on the mantelpiece (left, below) and one that won’t use your entire black ink cartridge/toner in one go (right, below). We hope you’ll do the responsible thing and circulate the ink-saving version at your next demo/protest/picnic/kettling workshop.”
https://terrorbull.co.uk/games/metakettle_pnpgame.php
https://terrorbull.co.uk/games/printandplay/metakettle/metakettle-fancy-1500×2122.jpg
