Downtown LA’s Massive New Immersive VR Theme Park Might Just Blow Your Mind – Two Bit Circus
Founded in 2012 by Brent Bushnell and Eric Gradman, the company and its flagship "micro-amusement park" exist at the intersection of technology and whimsy. Two Bit Circus is known for a variety of amusements including a giant ball-in-a-maze game that requires people on teeter-totters to operate, a gunner turret simulator, a laser maze and Hexacade, a six-person arcade console. A few years ago, they built an "escape room" at their space in The Brewery's art colony. Unlike similar games, however, the goal wasn't to escape, but to cooperatively pilot a spaceship.
"Eric and I have always loved getting people playing together. We started to see an opportunity for a bigger venue, where you could go and have a reason to come back," Bushnell says.
"Maybe we're playing a third party developer or a student's game," Gradman says. "If it does well — and we're capturing data about how every game in this place performs — then it's going to start spreading to nearby Skidoos."
In the VR cabanas, which you can rent by the hour, you'll be able to karaoke and play more than 20 games, from cow milking simulators to first-person zombie shooters.
Then there are the Story Rooms, the three most immersive games in the park. Space Squad In Space is a 30-minute game where four to six players work together to repair their spaceship or face certain doom. Lost City begins in a mine as two to eight players players figure out how to access the secret temple hidden within. In The Raft, four players defend their raft against an onslaught of demons.
Club 01 serves as a high-tech interactive theater. The room accommodates 96 players, each one sitting at a table equipped with touchscreens. A variety of programs run on the tablets including trivia, puzzles and a wine tasting experience where participants check off what notes they've tasted after each sip.
"We try to take the idea of the game show and make it interactive again," Gradman says. "Everybody who comes here gets to play. Everyone here is playing both with the people at their table and [everyone else in the room]."
Bushnell hopes Two Bit Circus will also serve as a platform for immersive theater and alternative reality game creators, too.
"With immersive theater, there is no Pantages," he says. "Immersive theater is all over the place. It's in restaurants, it's overlaid downtown. We have white space areas, secret rooms, secret closets and secret hallways that can be used as activation spaces."
A CARNIVAL NEEDS CONCESSIONS
When all the monster-fighting and puzzle-solving makes you hungry, you can eat "farm-to-circus" fare like baked corn dogs, truffle fries and ice cream sandwiches. There's also a full bar where drinks often involve fire, dry ice and liquid nitrogen. At a second, smaller bar, a robot named Gearmo beeps and boops while shaking up signature cocktails.
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