Immersive Gamebox’s new ‘Squid Game’ experience: It’s all fun and games…until it’s not - The Mercury News

You instrumentality a heavy enactment and hitch the sweat from your brow. The timepiece is ticking, and there’s not a 2nd to waste. Too galore lives are connected the line, and they’re each counting connected you. You whitethorn beryllium a player, but this isn’t conscionable a crippled — it’s clip to measurement up.

You’ll find those high-stakes thrills successful Santa Clara astatine Immersive Gamebox’s caller “Squid Game” experience, a integer escapade comprised of six mini games that mimic the ones played by the characters successful the hit 2021 Netflix series. (But here, cipher really dies.)

It’s a unsocial immersive acquisition nestled close successful that saccharine spot betwixt the wholly integer satellite you’ll find astatine virtual world gaming venues, and the carnal satellite of acceptable plan and quality actors you’ll find astatine venues similar the “Stranger Things” oregon “Bridgerton” experiences.

“It’s not your emblematic immersive experience,” says April De Leon, dual tract manager for the game’s California locations. “It’s not a movie, it’s not VR, it’s not an flight room, it’s not an creation show. It’s each of those things benignant of mixed successful one.”

A subordinate begins the Red Light, Green Light situation astatine Immersive Gamebox’s ‘Squid Game’ acquisition (Courtesy of Immersive Gamebox) 

The acquisition is its ain gateway into the “Squid Game” world. It’s mundane people, competing successful a cutthroat contention and hopeless to travel retired connected top. And acknowledgment to Gamebox’s 3-D question tracking technology, wall-to-wall interaction screens and a Netflix partnership, you tin walk a amusive and precise challenging hr arsenic 1 of those players.

“In aboriginal conversations with Netflix, determination was a batch of treatment and brainstorming,” says De Leon. Given that the show’s archetypal storyline was structured astir a game, turning “Squid Game” into a highly interactive, immersive crippled acquisition “seemed a earthy fit.”

The setup runs similar this: Every clip you implicit a challenge, a sum of Korean currency gets dropped successful your piggy bank, but each clip you lose, 1 of your players is eliminated. You commencement with a fewer 100 of those virtual players, but erstwhile the crippled gets going, those numbers commencement dropping, truthful support an oculus connected your subordinate tally.

Players effort the Dalgona situation successful Immersive Gamebox’s ‘Squid Game’ acquisition (Courtesy of Immersive Gamebox) 

The game’s archetypal situation is the classical Red Light, Green Light from playground days. You person to contention to a designated spot successful the country earlier clip runs retired (and hopefully without tripping implicit immoderate of your teammates). If you get caught moving erstwhile the airy is red, you’re toast — and these question trackers are nary joke! The slightest movement, and you’re out.

Dalgona, the cookie-cutting crippled wherever precision is key, is followed by Tug Of War, a task wherever teamwork is crucial.

Next up: Marbles, a spatial reasoning crippled that volition trial whether thing from high-school geometry really stuck with you, past Glass Bridge, a elemental representation crippled (or truthful it would appear). The last situation is Squid Game, which sees you madly dodging enemies arsenic you marque your mode done an obstacle course, earlier yet tasting the saccharine alleviation of triumph (and let’s not hide the currency … tons and tons of cash).

With an hr of anxiety-inducing challenges, each with devastating consequences, this acquisition whitethorn not beryllium for the faint of heart. But it’s besides not rather similar the Netflix series, with its gruesome deaths. Unlike the show, this truly is conscionable a game. “There is unit of course, due to the fact that of the quality of the show,” De Leon says, “and the thought is that your players are dying, erstwhile you suffer a challenge. But it’s implied violence. There is nary real, disposable unit depicted successful the crippled astatine all.”

That said, it’s hard to archer what’s much ominous, really seeing players die, similar you bash successful shooter video games, oregon having hundreds of people’s existences reduced to elemental numbers connected a screen, inching person and person to zero each clip you marque adjacent a flimsy mistake. In today’s modern age, wherever we’re perpetually seeing people’s lives summed up into statistic and infographics, easy dismissed with a swipe of the finger, the crippled mightiness really err person to our existent world than immoderate aboriginal dystopia. The crippled mightiness not beryllium viscerally gruesome, but determination is simply a sinister quality to thing hitting truthful adjacent to home.

If the “Squid Game” acquisition seems excessively dense for your taste, though, Gamebox does has plentifulness of other, much light-hearted fare successful its room of games, from “Shaun the Sheep” to the first-ever multiplayer “Angry Birds” slingshot game.

One happening worthy noting is Gamebox’s accessibility. Some virtual experiences —  games that usage dense gear, for example, and at-times disorienting headsets — tin beryllium hard for immoderate individuals. The lone instrumentality Gamebox uses is simply a airy visor and immoderate limb and wrist sensors for question tracking.

“The mode we instill immersion done projection mapping and interaction surface capabilities is simply a batch friendlier to assorted demographics than a batch of the different experiences retired there,” De Leon says, “which is thing we’re really, truly arrogant of.”

Players effort the Red Light, Green Light situation successful Immersive Gamebox’s ‘Squid Game’ acquisition (Courtesy of Immersive Gamebox) 

All things considered, Gamebox’s “Squid Game” acquisition is entertaining, accessible and thrilling. I made it retired with a bulk of my players inactive intact and a whopping, albeit fictional, ₩74.90 cardinal successful my pocket.

Immersive Gamebox

Bookings disposable betwixt 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. regular at Westfield Valley Fair, 2855 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 2605, successful Santa Clara.Tickets are $35 to $40 per person, and rooms tin accommodate up to six people. Find tickets and much accusation astatine immersivegamebox.com.