NOW PLAYING: FLUX: An Immersive Cyberpunk Experience
Toronto’s Lockwood Immersive throws down the cybergauntlet and challenges you to hack the night away, choom
Lockwood Immersive charmed NoPro with its debut creation The Hunt for the Brightwing Butterly — a whimsical hunt for a fabled creature through Toronto’s largest park. Now the company is back with something even more up our dystopian nightmare alley: “an open-world cyberpunk experience”: FLUX.
Set in “a crooked dive bar in the year 2125,” and currently running in Sector T-0, excuse us, Toronto, we just had to get the full download on the newness. Thankfully Jesse Gazic, co-director, of FLUX was kind enough to give us what we need through the ancient tech known as e-mail.
Flux runs through April 24th, with tickets priced at C$68.
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NO PROSCENIUM: Tell us a little bit about your experience! What’s it about? What makes it immersive?
Jesse Gazic: In the year 2125, FLUX is an out-of-the-way bar where hackers, criminals, and corrupt officials gather to make deals, take on jobs, and hopefully come out a few creds richer. Life is hard in Sector T-0, and most people can’t afford to pass up work, regardless of if it’s safe — or even legal.
At FLUX, you step into the role of a desperate hacker looking to rustle up some quick cash. Each job you can take on a storyline of its own combining exploration, escape-room style puzzles, and interaction with live performers. Guided through the world via a web app on your phone, no two jobs at FLUX are alike, and where the night takes you is up to you. Will you strike up an unlikely friendship with a fugitive AI? Or subject yourself to dubious, but lucrative medical testing for a megacorporation? The choice is yours.
NP: What was the inspiration for the experience?
JG: We’re very interested in bringing experiences to Toronto that expand beyond standard escape game or walkthrough formats. Lockwood co-director Jesse Gazic was particularly inspired by a visit to PHANTOM PEAK during a recent trip to London. The free-roaming, sandbox nature of the experience allowed for guests to pace their own journeys, and the pool of randomized questlines allowed for unique storylines to emerge for each visitor. FLUX takes place in a single bar, but riffs off the sandbox idea to allow for lots of exploration and a variety of storylines.
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The cyberpunk nature of FLUX was inspired both by our chosen setting (a venerable sci-fi themed bar in Toronto’s west end) and the genre’s increasingly resonant themes: anxieties around technology, wealth disparity, and social alienation feel more timely than ever. We hope FLUX can offer a catharsis where these demons can be named and exorcised in a tongue-in-cheek fashion.
NP: What do you think fans of immersive will find most interesting about this latest experience?
JG: Immersive fans will be excited about the variety of interactions they will be able to have at FLUX — in addition to the central mechanic of the job, there’s an arcade, games led by the cast, and even a costume contest. Our goal is that even if a group comes together and completes their jobs as a team, the breadth of the show still allows for each of them to have a totally unique experience — you might be the one picked to play a hand of Blip or dance with a cyber popstar.
NP: Once you started designing and testing what did you discover about this experience that was unexpected?
JG: The Lockwood team has worked on a variety of immersive projects, but this was the first in an open-world style, and one goal was to create a space where people could take their time deciding what to do. We knew a certain percentage of people were going to want to race through the storylines as fast as possible, but we were surprised at how challenging at times it was to get people to slow down.
Some design strategies like a pre-show period where people can situate in the space, and narrative interludes where quest givers might involve you in optional supplementary moments, will hopefully allow people to consider the pace of their night and stop and smell the cyber-roses, at least on occasion.
NP: What can fans who are coming to this, or thinking about coming to this, do to get into the mood of the experience?
JG: Guests are certainly encouraged to dress up when attending FLUX. Current cyberpunk touchstones like CYBERPUNK 2077 definitely inspire elements of the experience, but we’re also fans of classic texts like SNOW CRASH and NEUROMANCER. Aesthetically, the bar setting brings a bit of 80s, neon-soaked coating through the whole thing; we’ve been listening to a lot of vaporwave playlists while developing the experience!
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