Player Feedback
“…tightly plotted and extremely well crafted.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It was better than Crack and even more addictive.”
“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…”
“From the moment of arrival to the end credits the experience was intense and thrilling.”
“This is the most immersive event that I’ve ever attended…”
“The effects were almost literally out of this world.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“…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…”
“I’ve been regularly attending these events for 25 or more years and I’ve never come across an event that used psychological techniques to enhance the atmosphere and the narrative. 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.”
“Innovative, exciting, immersive, brilliant. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you.”
“…all three of the Fear-Love-Grief triad were present in abundance…”
“It’s a whole different level of interactivity.”
“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.”
“To me it was a near-perfect interactive experience and I can’t see how it could have been bettered.”
“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 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.”
“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’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.”
“So much more immersive, so much more believable, so much more interactive than any of the other games I’ve ever played in.”
“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 was more like being within a movie than being within a game.”
“The best ghost story I’ve ever been in.”
“It’s the most immersive LRP I’ve been 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Reactions
The reactions took us by surprise. We’ve always been known for going ‘big’ with our special effects, and we were pleased with what we did. But most people didn’t mention them, which, for one of our events, was unusual.
But then we figured out what we think has happened. It seems to be because they were so caught up their characters and their characters’ emotional journeys and the overarching story that the effects just felt part of the world. And that surprised us. But it’s fantastic, because it means we got something right. The best effects are the ones no-one notices; they just think they’re real.
Conclusions
After the fact, we’ve come to the conclusion that giving each character a problem and a secret – effectively putting them on a tipping point – unbalancing them and then applying pressure from all angles for 48 hours meant that several of those characters underwent quite massive dramatic changes. Blossomed into full character arcs. And because we highlighted and mirrored our theme all the way through, that meant that the players felt part of the story.
But who really knows? At any rate – something happened.