“I feel much more alive having wired my nervous system up to the mains for 48 hours. I think this game’s achieved a higher order of magnitude of reality through the design and it’ll be a benchmark against which other games are measured.”
“It’s very hard to ignore the smell of the trenches when you’re standing at the top of the stairs or in a corridor, it’s just incredibly jarring.”
“It’s the most immersive LRP I’ve been in.”
“Looking back at the event now, whilst I initially [wrote] about lots of the amazing scenes and special effects that happened, it's the emotional experiences and the character interactions and relationships that I find I'm treasuring the most in my memories of the weekend.”
“It was like being inside a movie, that’s the best way I can describe it.”
“I'm having trouble articulating just how exceptional and enjoyable this event was...”
“I can honestly say in more than 20 years of LARP I have never been in-character for that length of time.”
“...extraordinary, immersive, visceral.”
“The best ghost story I’ve ever been in.”
“I’m really grateful I was able to take part in this game I think it will be talked about in LRP circles for years. I’m relieved because I don’t have to be terrified anymore for quite a while; sad because I don’t expect other games to match up and sad because the event organisers won’t do anything for at least the next few years.”
“I've never enjoyed being petrified so much, and that was before I saw the ghosts.”
“So much more immersive, so much more believable, so much more interactive than any of the other games I’ve ever played in.”
“The sheer quantity of props in terms of letters, photos, pictures, sounds, smells, puppets, stunts; all of that made the scenario - the whole event - incredibly real.”
“Just got back from an absolutely amazing weekend of ghosts, curses, sermons, Christmas dinner, secrets, incest, secret daughters, terror, burning witch, ladies jumping out of windows, psalms and redcoats... everyone involved in any way is an absolute star of the highest order.”
“It’s now a week on and I’m still dreaming that I’m my character. At the time I was dreaming I was my character. It was so immersive that I forgot that I was me.”
“Upon reflection, it’s still one of the stand-out immersive events that I have attended in my life. Much more than just a game. The level of emotional involvement that I think we all felt throughout the weekend was spectacular. Visually and sensually memorable in every way.”
“Scary, immersive, incredible, interactive, massive suspension of disbelief. I just think the entire team have done an amazing job and completely raised the bar for any style of interactive storytelling and I don’t think anything will scare me quite as much as this did.”
“...it’s left an emotional legacy behind in that there was a camaraderie shared amongst some of the players that I think we’ll continue to share...”
“It will be talked about and praised for many years to come, as the best, as a pioneer and as something you missed out on if you weren’t there.”
“It’s made me come to re-evaluate my relationship with the medium as a whole and with what I can expect from a game and to take away from a game.”
“There were as few dissonant elements as they could possibly manage and that really contributed to me being able to play my character as if she was me.”
“I want more emotions, I have contacted several people who played the game to see if I can convince them to roleplay in other worlds alongside me so that I can try and continue a small part of what I felt there.”
“GRYM was one of the best experiences of fiction (books, film, plays all of it) I've ever had.”
“...tightly plotted and extremely well crafted.”
“This is the most immersive event that I’ve ever attended...”
“From the moment of arrival to the end credits the experience was intense and thrilling.”
“To me it was a near-perfect interactive experience and I can’t see how it could have been bettered.”
“I have never been to a LARP before that created such emotion within me.”
“GRYM has really raised the bar for an event, it is so far beyond anything I’ve experienced before I have nothing to compare it to.”
“...I just think that God Rest Ye Merry is going to turn out to be the game that other games aspire to be when they grow up.”
“...all three of the Fear-Love-Grief triad were present in abundance...”
“All of the design was unified behind a single goal, which was the embedding of the emotional impact of the narrative and the immersion of the participants in the event. To my mind it worked spectacularly well.”
“There were times during the game when it was very difficult to tell if I was myself or I was my character. It felt very, very real.”
“God Rest Ye Merry was a haunted house ghost story of the highest calibre.”
“Needless to say we didn’t go and check, nor return to the room, nor sleep a single minute more of the night.”
“The effects were almost literally out of this world.”
“...the best roleplay event I’ve ever been to!”
“It’s a whole different level of interactivity.”
“The visual design of the event was coherent, incredibly detailed and I can only describe it as a triumph. A number of times over the weekend I found I was questioning exactly what it was I was seeing.”
“Crooked House redefined what I thought was possible in LRP.”
“There are games that constitute the stories that we tell one another... Those moments when something so extraordinary happens that it lives on for years after and becomes something more...”
“I’m quite sad because I’m fairly certain it’s going to be a long while before I’ll be at an event that’ll reach that same level of brilliance.”
