Escape rooms i all ära, men brittiska Parabolic Theatre tar den typen av upplevelser till en helt nya nivå. Deras senaste projekt heter Bridge Command och är en "live-action starship simulator" som praktiskt taget låter dig kliva in i rollen som befäl på ett rymdskepp i bästa Star Trek-anda.
Konceptet bygger på att en grupp deltagare placeras på en kommandobrygga, en detaljerad och interaktiv miljö fylld med knappar, reglage och skärmar som alla fyller en funktion. Tillsammans ska man utföra uppdrag som kan handla om diplomatiska förhandlingar eller intensiv rymdstrid, där varje val påverkar berättelsen och världen du befinner dig i.
Under MCM Comic Con i London pratade vi med artistic director Owen Kingston, som berättade mer om visionen:
"So it's a live-action starship simulator. And what we've got in our facility in Vauxhall is two better-than-movie-quality starship sets, where there isn't a single button that doesn't do something. So you have a fully-functioning starship that you and your friends can fly and go off on adventures in. Like many different science fiction TV shows, you gotta be the star."
Kingston förklarade också hur storyn formas under spelets gång:
"So we have a team of live actors that work alongside it. So you come on and you and your friends or the crew of the ship, you fly the ship, but you'll be interacting with our actors at all kinds of different points. And they will play like all of the possible characters that you could meet. So if you imagine like a type of science fiction TV show, you know, you get different regular recurring tropes.
In our military missions, they're like the big space battle ones where you go out and you fight bad guys and you do that kind of cool stuff. But you also have the diplomacy missions where you end up negotiating or trying to help soothe tensions between different groups. So it kind of depends what sort of angle on the sci-fi you really enjoy. You know, if you want to come and be Captain Kirk and go around the place blowing stuff up... 'who cares about the consequences', you can do that. Similarly, if you want to cosplay as Captain Picard and you want to come along and sort of try and, you know, be the guy in the big chair, making sure everybody gets along with each other, you can do that too. We've tried to sort of cater for all those different possibilities."
Om du någonsin drömt om att ta plats i kaptenens stol och styra ett rymdskepp mot okända världar, så är Bridge Command förmodligen det närmaste du kommer utan att själv lämna atmosfären.
