If you went to a college where people were running around with water guns, you’ve probably heard of the folk game Assassin. PAX provides another perfect place to play the game, with over 60,000 people in attendance.
The idea of the game is simple, and can be played anywhere there’s a big group of people who will be crossing paths occasionally, like a college or a gaming convention.
Each player is assigned a target that they have to track down and “kill”. That can mean shooting them with a water or Nerf gun, “poisoning” their food with hot sauce, or some other method of marking them as assassinated.
In the PAX East version, Assassin’s Ball, each player has a pin with a coloured shape and a faction of their choosing. You kill another player by simply walking up and informing them that they’re dead, then enterting their ‘kill code’ on the game’s website.
You get more points for killing a player of a particular faction, but it’s very difficult to find a specific faction among the thousands of attendees, so often you’ll be happy to find any matching shape.
The PAX East version has changed a bit from last year, where if you were killed once, you were out of the game. This year had no lives or respawning, the goal was just to rack up as many kills as possible over the weekend. It took some of the pressure off since you wouldn’t be out of the game if you got killed on the first day, but that also removes some of the tension. I’m looking forward to seeing next year’s iteration, and if you’ll be at PAX, you should check it out.
Thanks to my friend Ben for putting together this video on the game!
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