London. LA. The Metav.. oh, wait that term was ruined. Dang.*
London. LA. VR. There. Three reviews of three very very very different experiences.
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PHASMAGORICA™ The Room Between Worlds (Los Angeles)
Twilight Disturbances
$112; The Petit Ermitage; Ongoing
Have you ever wondered if you’re secretly psychic? Have you ever wanted to try to connect with the other side using paranormal paraphernalia? If so, you’re in the right place with Phasmagorica.
This experience takes place deep inside one of the most whimsical and bohemian hotels in Los Angeles, The Petit Ermitage. Your evening begins in a fanciful hallway where wonder and curiosity meet, as your host Smith escorts you down a staircase riddled with chalk drawings of spicy puns and cheeky vignettes. You’ll reach a wine cellar, where the gentle hum of a refrigerator is amplified against the silence of the windowless room. Zener cards are drawn, and you are encouraged for the first time to tap into your intuition, to connect with something outside of yourself and yet somehow buried in the depths of your consciousness.
From here, you enter a drawing room, where spirits are poured and conversation is encouraged. You exchange personal stories of the unexplained and explore the reaches of your interest in apparitions. Before long, it’s time to attempt to connect with one yourself. You are invited to select a historic relic as a trigger object and enter a lavish seance chamber.
What happens next is simple yet intricate; empty but somehow filled with suspense. Anything can happen, but so can nothing. But even then, nothing may potentially be the beginning of something. For the duration of the experience, you are educated on the occult and guided through various rituals and given the tools to summon spirits and connect with the departed. Will anything come through, or will you leave with hunger to try again and again until it does?
This experience is a guided seancé, with no discernable gimmicks or gotcha moments. Seamless as it is, there are no magic tricks or special effects that are easily spotted, despite the hosts’ known connection to the magic community. Smith is a passionate host, inspired by paranormal experiences, on a mission to help connect those who are willing to the other side.
I would recommend this experience to couples who have always wanted to participate in a paranormal investigation, or friends curious about the occult. As someone who is fascinated by the paranormal, I will say that I did not have any discernable experiences to speak of, but I had a wonderful time and would gladly return. This is a highly repeatable show if you have an interest in the paranormal.
— Briana Roecks, LA & Social Media Correspondent
Nutcracker Noir (London)
DesignScene and Secret Theatre
Tickets from £45; Protein Studios, Shoreditch;
Nov. 25 - Dec. 21
As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm a sucker for a bit of the old razzle dazzle, so when I heard about Nutcracker Noir, billed as a cabaret take on the famous Tchaikovsky ballet complete with feasting and creative cocktails, nobody was surprised to hear I was interested. What is less well-known about me, though, is that I've seen the traditional ballet live, around the holidays, no less, and I've loved the music since I was a child. With these two things in mind, Nutcracker Noir wasn't quite what I expected, but both razzle and dazzle it provided plenty of.
Guests have been invited to the Nutcracker Noir, a London nightclub whose chief choreographer, the mysterious orphan Clara, is in the spotlight for the evening after she redesigned the show. Along the way, you'll meet the club owner, his son, and a ferocious theatre critic, who carries the show's comedic elements on magnificently padded shoulders (though perhaps I'm biased, given I'm writing this review). How will the show go? Will Clara get clues to her mysterious origins? What's with the multiple appetizers, anyway? You'll have answers to all these things and more.
What you won't have, though, is much Tchaikovsky, or, indeed, anything resembling the plot of the original ballet. If you're waiting for a one-eyed man to give someone ornamental kitchen gadgets for Christmas, you'll be waiting a long time. Happily, you'll have a much shorter wait for the delicious meal served during the show, and the dancing is really something special.
I'll admit, I was a little sorry not to hear the Russian dance; I know the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies (which is featured) is the classic, but we all have our favorites. But oh well. When you're belting out "Fairy Tale of New York" over a plate of Basque cheesecake, watching people covered in spangles whirl and twirl in ways you never could, it's impossible not to feel merry and bright.
– Ellery Weil, London correspondent
Walkabout Mini Golf: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (VR)
Mighty Coconut
$3.99; Meta Quest, Steam, PSVR2, PICO; Available Now
I've often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It's the most difficult trap on the whole damn course. –Alice, presumably.
There’s a running gag in immersive circles that Alice in Wonderland is the most over-mined story for immersive theatre shows. One year I think we counted five, six if you added in the seminal Then She Fell in NYC.
Of course, there’s a reason why immersive creators are drawn to Alice, indeed the whole of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland creations. It’s simply that the mind-bending perspective shifts in the story really get to the nature of the art of immersive: it’s all about point of view and the plasticity of the relationship between things. The craft of immersive is about shaping the space between the audience and the world of the story, sometimes shrinking the distance, sometimes expanding it. Playing with the feeling of being connected to a place that is otherwise only in your head.
That is Wonderland.
And it should come as no surprise that Mighty Coconut, under the watchful eye of Mighty Coconut's Senior Art Director Don Carson, has hit a hole in one with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the latest course for the World’s Greatest VR Game™.
Okay maybe I made up that tag line.
The Wonderland course, divided as always into two modes the first of which I was able to play for this review, takes players through challenges designed to invoke the spirit of Carrol’s novels and adds an entirely new mechanic to Walkabout: size change. As in you will shrink or grow thanks to two distinct “water” hazards on the course. The effect can be a tad disorienting, so Mighty Coconut give you the option to lessen the impact in settings. I chose to face the effect at full blast, and found it a bit euphoric alongside being slightly disorienting and leaving a kind of surreal afterglow that lingered as I played.
Thematically appropriate, although I think one too many more hits of the effect and I might have come out a little punchdrunk. So chalk that up as a flawless victory for playing with perception.
It’s hard to talk about Walkabout in general without sounding as mad as a hatter, given how much joy we’ve found in playing the game with friends or solo over the years. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is more of this, and with the addition of the shrinking/growing mechanic one of the more daring entries in the downloadable content collection. Indeed if you’re the kind of Walkabout player who doesn’t pick up every course due to how many there are, even though they are very reasonably priced, this is one you should not miss. And while, yes, only one person in any playgroup needs to own it for all to play, it’s a good time to reward the studio for taking creative risks by putting down a few dollars.
The holes themselves on the first, traditionally less difficult, course are not the most challenging that Mighty Coconut has devised — that or I continue to get better — as I was only two strokes off of par on my first play through. Yet being so tantalizingly close only steels my resolve to go back in and master the course.
If you’re someone just getting into VR gaming then you simply must pick up the base game and grab this while you are at it.
Also available in non-VR for iPhone & iPad.
– Noah J. Nelson, Publisher
*Which is a shame, because I really liked "The Metaverse" ever since I read Snow Crash. Maybe we can just bring back "Cyberspace." That one was always fun. And shoutout to the Virtual Adepts out there still holding it down for the Digital Web.
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