We recently reported on the new fun tool to build your own subway system in New York City, which was an entry into the Power Broker competition which seeks to adapt the seminal biography on Robert Moses into game form. There’s another entry in this competition that caught our eye, called Confetti with the Brick Bats which uses actual historical documents on Robert Moses and asks the player to make a decision as the master builder. The creators of the game, Alexander King and Noca Wu are game design students at the NYU Game Center, partnering with NYU Stern MBA student Robert Heller who did the writing for the game.
King tells Untapped Cites, “We thought Caro’s biography exposes so much history that the average New Yorker is unaware of” and to that end, Confetti with the Brick Bats partnered with the New York Public Library to get access to the Robert Moses papers collection and with the Brooklyn Historical Society for maps. “Many of the documents in game have never been digitized before now,” says King. They went through thousands of archival documents to land on the ones from the game. Even the music soundtrack to the game is carefully curated – they’re radio recordings of Robert Moses’s favorite band, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians.
You can download the game here! Here are some additional screenshots from the game:
Michelle is the founder of Untapped New York and the author of The Art Spy (HarperOne, forthcoming) Secret Brooklyn, Secret New York Hidden Bars & Restaurants, and Broadway. michelleyoungwriter.com
