Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

In a way, the whole point of the world’s most successful video game is drudgery: Minecraft casts you as a self-employed resource gatherer who lives off the land and must harvest wood, soil, coal etc. in order to create a shack in which to hide from the various monsters that come out at night.

Setting up shop in a, uh, corner of new Surrey Quays venue Corner Corner, this officially licensed immersive attraction is only 45 minutes long, but that’s a whole two-and-a-quarter days of Minecraft time. And if my children are anything to go by, then the globally touring show – London is its second stop after, inexplicably, Fort Worth in Texas – successfully whips its audience into an ecstatic frenzy of resource-gathering that might become diluted if they were given too much longer to realise they had basically been put to work down t’ pit.

Although Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue opened in London the same day as A Minecraft Movie, the two actually have no direct connection beyond both being adaptations officially licensed by game creator Mojang Studios (it’s produced by a company called Experience Mod in collaboration with Mojang). Upon entry, each of us is issued a little McGuffin called the Orb of Interaction (being Minecraft, the orb is of course a cube). By tapping or gesturing at the various projected environments in the attraction’s sundry rooms we can interact with them via the Orb to harvest the resources required to complete our mini quest, which is to save a group of hapless Villagers from zombification. 

The globally touring show successfully whips its audience into an ecstatic frenzy of resource-gathering

Basically, each room revolves around variations on bashing things with the Orb… and it’s pretty enjoyable, frenetic enough and with just enough variation to remain entertaining (the nature of the interactions and interfaces varies a little from room to room – the most fun bit is when when we throw ‘real’ snowballs at some fire monsters). The staff are game and helpful, and the environments are not only interactive but Instagrammable as you like: I was vaguely mortified when my youngest clambered on top of an angular Minecraft pig the second we arrived, until a staff member told us not to worry, they actually encourage it.

I’m sure you could come up with a deeper and more varied Minecraft-themed show, and despite the lure of an exclusive cape, I’m not sure there’s much here for even fans of the game over the age of about 13. But my kids loved it and were thoroughly wrung out after those 45 minutes – like the game itself, it’s pretty basic in a lot of ways, but it hits the spot.