The ‘micro-amusement park’ combines VR, escape rooms, and carnival games to create a grand, playable adventure
Throw out the term”amusement park,” and it conjures up visions of roller coasters and rides and rides characters in enormous, franchise-themed lands. But within a warehouse in the downtown arts district of Los Angeles, a company called Two Bit Circus is building its own riff about the idea, centered on the power of matches.
Aside from some bulbs and a sign, The outside of the self-styled”micro-amusement park” does not seem all that remarkable. It is a brick-faced building, a few blocks out of a Blue Bottle Coffee, and across the road from a favorite LA filming location that’s popped up in all from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off into Agent Carter. But stepping inside the park itself is like being whisked away into another world. There is a steampunk carnival midway a video game, and a section. There are a robot bartender escape chambers, and a dinner bar for productions and interactive game shows. It is a dizzying array of options; a tech-infused amusement utopia wrapped into a circus-meets-Ready Player One aesthetic.
However, to see it as a collection of games is overlooking The point entirely. Two little Circus is hoping to create something larger: a living, breathing world that’s tied together through communal gameplay, secret quests, and live celebrities, where guests may appear to play with an arcade cabinet, but might shortly find themselves pulled to a real-life narrative that will let them discover the hidden mysteries of this park (alleged) past.
The Two Bit Circus micro-amusement park isn’t just an arcade. It’s one adventure game.
The Century Carnival
“We Wanted to perform our own location, our very own bar, as early as 2009,” Two Bit Circus CEO and co-founder Brent Bushnell informs me. Bushnell is the son of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese founder Nolan Bushnell, and since he lays out his vision for the park ahead of its September 7th opening, it’s simple to see the connective tissue between the new venture along with his dad’s own love of gaming and theme parks.
A decade back, Bushnell and 2 Bit Circus chief technology officer Eric Gradman worked together at Syyn Labs, an art and engineering collective that technical in whimsical creations like the Rube Goldberg machine at OK Go’s”This Too Shall Pass” movie . That project led to corporate gigs for clients such as Disney and Google, and if Bushnell and Gradman founded Two Bit Circus in 2012, their new firm went to work producing experiential advertising activations, combining virtual reality and physical elements in pieces for the NBA, the Super Bowl, and manufacturers such as Intel.
“Finally, in 2013, we were like,’Gosh, we have completed a Hundred occasions these other things that are branded, for everybody else. Let us do our own thing,”’ Bushnell says. “That was our Carnival came from.
Two Bit’s STEAM Carnival has been a take on the Carnival road series, including inventions and matches. (Both Bushnell and Gradman have technology backgrounds.) The venture’s intention was not simply to entertain; it had been to encourage children to pursue research in science and the arts. The”STEAM” at STEAM Carnival came out of science, engineering, technology, arts, and mathematics, and to make it all as eloquent as possible, the duo threw into a liberal dose of lasers and fire stunts. The”dip tank flambé,” for instance, was a riff on the traditional dip tank — though rather than dumping someone in water, kids had the opportunity to roast Gradman in a chamber full of fire.
The carnival traveled but the Impracticality of moving such an elaborate production turned their Focus toward producing a more permanent installation that will Become the park.
