Open the first of three box sets for the multi-part game and one will be greeted with poems from the likes of William Blake and John Donne, among others, as “Mother of Frankenstein” makes the bet that the home tabletop game can be an expansive work of historical fiction.īroadly speaking, both titles fit into the category of at-home games that use some escape room mechanics, a genre popularized by the likes of L.A.’s the Wild Optimists, creators of the “Escape Room in a Box” brand. Think of its “Mother of Frankenstein” as part novel, part puzzle game, one in which challenges are sprung from various aspects of Shelley’s life and interests. Los Angeles’ Hatch Escapes, home to the lighthearted, comedy-focused escape room Lab Rat as well as the Scout Expedition-created exploratory, live-action game “The Nest,” opts for a more timeless approach. It’s a risk, considering that outside of “Pokémon Go,” AR has largely failed to capture the imagination of the public, but the firm makes the argument that AR needn’t simply be used to bring digital accoutrements into our world instead when it comes to storytelling, AR works best when it is accentuating a confined and defined universe. In its “The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City,” Pasadena’s Infinite Rabbit Holes employs augmented reality technology to overlay live-action and animated scenes over a board and various peripheries. There are familiar entry points - the Batman franchise for Infinite Rabbit Holes and the romantic life of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley for Hatch Escapes - but both take different approaches to center narrative rather than simply use story as a settling. Both have roots in disparate strands of the world of immersive entertainment - theme parks, alternate reality games, escape rooms - and the format each has chosen to experiment with is decidedly old-fashioned: the tabletop game.īut the companies behind them - Animal Repair Shop’s Infinite Rabbit Holes and Hatch Escapes - have ambitious visions for how storytelling, play and puzzles can intersect. These are grand themes, some of-the-moment and others timeless, but all told through the medium of play courtesy of two separate groups of local designers. A lifelong love affair, and the ways in which passion and grief shape and color our hobbies. The spread of disinformation through social media.

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