For Fortress Island Pampus just offshore near Amsterdam, Haute Technique created six interactive games that tell the fort’s history by making use of contemporary gameplay.

When entering the fortress all visitors are handed out a Pampus Key. After unlocking the games with these the visitors are introduced into fictive situations. In the morse game for example the visitors have to get a accurate message across using an actual morse key. On the screen the morse lettres slide by guitar-hero style to provoke competition between the players.

In the canteen the visitors can sit down at half a table to take a quiz. The other half of the table is projected onto a glass surface, showing the captain and his crew as if they’re having dinner with them. The multiple choice quiz presented by the captain is not answered by simply hitting a button, but by actually pointing towards the right answer.

Other games contain physical elements like filling canon shells with gunpowder, or distributing projected soup over various plates. Through clever futuristic yet minimalist design, each game acquires a timeless nature, without interfering with the historic character of the fortress’s interior.

Although it was never used for it’s actual purpose of defending Amsterdam in a war, the fortress of pampus has been trough a lot since it’s inception in 1887. Stripped bare from metal by the germans and wood by the inhabitants of Amsterdam in the second world war the fortress went into decline. In the sixties it was occupied by students, their stay is still visible in the graffiti. Eventually, some enthusiastic citizens turned it into the museum that is currently there.

AAIQU