Telling
scary stories is as old as story-telling itself, and the horror genre has
covered all manner of supernatural and non-supernatural monsters, demons and
ghouls.
Not
satisfied with passively enjoying horror movies and TV shows, or engaging with
screen based horror videogames, the team at IRL Shooter has taken a love of
being scared and created real life horror game events, Patient 0 in 2012 and
now Lazarus, coming to Melbourne in 2014.
Patient
0 saw eight players requesting ‘voluntary extraction’ from the game venue due
to being too scared or disturbed to continue. The team at IRL aim to increase
this number, significantly.
The
combination of immersive interactive theatre, a huge film set quality game
facility, the most realistic infra-red weapons ever made, a deeply disturbing
cast of terrifying characters and a survival horror game-play, comes close to
describing what IRL Shooter do.
“Anyone
who has ever played a horror genre video game or watched horror survival movies
has thought – ‘How would I react if this were real?’. What IRL Shooter does is
create the environment where players can, for the first time, finally answer
this question for themselves” - David Leadbetter
The
game's narrative relies on a well-understood combination of an evil global
corporation, genetic mutations and the living dead, and takes place in a
10,000m2 production designed building, dressed to look like a secret
underground medical facility from your favourite horror film or game.
“Our
game venue uses all the best bits of horror videogame and movies, such as the
sound and lighting design, so that our players know instantly that this is a
place to be afraid of, because it’s coming to get you” - Drew Hobbs
Author
H.P. Lovecraft’s famous quote – "The oldest and strongest emotion of
mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the
unknown" is still as valid today as ever and seeking fear for
entertainment has never been more popular.
The
building is populated with all manner of monsters and mutants and the squad of
6 players need to work closely to navigate their way through the facility,
neutralize the horde and successfully complete their mission.
IRL
Shooter’s first game, Patient 0, saw over 6200 players brave the facility in
Melbourne’s North and the new game ‘Lazarus’ will take the player experience to
the next level.
“This
time our players will get their hands dirty. Tissue samples need to be
recovered; eyeballs need to be pulled out of heads to open retinal scanner
doors. We have upped the gore component and increased the tension, so the
scares will hopefully break more people” - Drew Hobbs
For
Lazarus, IRL Shooter has added ‘The Pain Belt’ option for players, so that now
they can genuinely feel pain when their ‘health’ is damaged inside the game
arena.
Previously,
the lack of physical ‘pain’ involved in laser tag (infra-red) based events has
been one of its major draw-backs compared with Paintball games, but not anymore.
To
add to the realism of the game experience, players can now chose to add ‘The
Pain Belt’ to their game load-out. Worn over clothing, this belt will give the
players a small but powerful electric shock when their health is affected
either by a zombie attack or from being shot.
“The
pain-belt creates real fear in the player and a visceral incentive to avoid the
infected horde, further heightening the intensity of the immersive game
experience.” - Drew Hobbs
IRL
Shooter has also just launched a new competition, encouraging horror genre
filmmakers to create a 2 minute ‘cut scene’ film to be used in the game.
3
scripts are available to use, along with some downloadable content to help the
filmmakers with their project. The winning entry will take home an off-road
‘Tumbler’ vehicle that was used in the first game, Patient 0. Details can be
found at http://www.irlshooter.com/competition
For
now, all eyes are on the current crowd-funding campaign and IRL Shooter are
encouraging people interested in playing to buy tickets via http://www.pozible.com/lazarusbefore
the campaign ends.
Website:
www.irlshooter.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/irlshooter
Twitter:
www.twitter.com/irlshooter
YouTube:
www.youtube.com/irlshooteraus
Crowd-Funding: www.pozible.com/lazarus
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