Secret doors, a bookcase that moves, a washing machine that you can climb through or a laser fight with a stranger. It is possible from September in the abandoned Swaenenborgh shopping center in Meppel. This weekend the trailers will be shot and the first fantasy characters will come to life.
“We’ve been working on it for a long time,” explains Alita Smit. She is the creative brain behind the organization. “You can create your own world. How cool is that?”
Her pride: the game Dark Wizard in which participants find themselves in a secret world of wizards. About twenty to thirty actors play against a hundred participants. “People have to feel like they’re in a movie. They step into a storyline and have to do missions. They have to make choices in the game and eventually they come to their own end.”
The concept is similar to that of an escape room. But there is also a big difference, according to Smit: “In an escape room you are always in a room, it lasts an hour and then you are out again. Here people have real contact with actors, they can make choices themselves.”
The game has a touch of Harry Potter, but in the setting of an abandoned shopping mall.
See what it looks like in the video below: