Fairy Tale Regulations
The Big Bad Wolf went vegetarian, Aladdin’s lamp is coughing, and the Evil Queen is now growing unappetising pumpkins instead of delicious apples. What is going on with the Fairy Tale Universe? The Land of Fairy Tales is powered by magic but it’s more fragile than you would think. The slightest malfunction can upset the balance and the enchanted universe could collapse. As the new LXR unit of Pandore & Associés, it’s your task to fix the story world. The game is fully immersive right from the very beginning, and it spreads over a 120m2 magical (grown-up) playground.
At the door you are greeted by a Pandore & Associés’s employee and you are arriving for your interview for the Fairy Tale Land maintenance job. In the waiting area you might feel you had just slipped into Newt Scamander’s (Fantastic Beast) suitcase: you are surrounded by suspicious crates, cases, and cages. The indistinct and curious noises coming from somewhere will leave you with no doubt that they do indeed deal with the most extraordinary objects and creatures that have become too dangerous to be let loose in the world.
You start your adventure in a very techie control room. The attention to the tiniest detail is so amazing, you just want to stop and read every label but there is absolutely no time for that. The intensity of the game is off the scale, and the adventure is filled with adrenaline right up to the very end. You have to collaborate and coordinate with your teammates all the time. Here I would like to emphasise teammates, in the plural. The recommended team size is 3+, and they aren’t kidding. We were two people down due to Covid, but the company kindly let us in with a team of two. With just two players you will be short of arms because, at some points, more than four buttons have to be pushed simultaneously. In the first room we resorted to head-pressing some buttons, and reaching others with our feet, but in the last one we were close to losing our sanity. So do take at least three people!
After leaving the control room you will be zapped to the Land of Fairy Tales where you will start your journey through the most well-known stories. The décor just adds to the full immersiveness of the game. You won’t find any flimsy or cheap-looking cardboard props, everything is built to climb on. Yep, you have read it right: to climb on! Finally, a room where the “Do not climb on anything, do not even look up, and do not even think about doing so” isn’t the first, nor the second rule, it isn’t even a rule at all! To get the clues, and to solve the puzzles, you will have to climb, crawl and explore, you will most probably spend more time kneeling down than in an upright position. There are no padlocks in the room, not even one! Instead, there is a lot of exploration and manipulation where you need to be vigilant and skilful, and it will be most helpful if you arrive with some sense of rhythm. Again, the game is very intense, 75 minutes will fly by in the blink of an eye, and you just keep wishing there was more time to take in every single detail of this immense place. You will probably struggle even to remember all the rooms you have just rushed through, but the game is charming and filled with humour so, if you work well under pressure, you will have a magical time.
