If you have a young Minecraft fanatic in your life, the immersive Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue game now running at EXP Rosemont is a diverting way to spend a family hour. Yes, moms, dads and other adult caregivers fully participate in this team-driven quest to rescue a village turned into zombies.
The experience takes you through seven interactive realms, starting with a room in which you see the village laid out on a long table with an embedded video screen and start gathering supplies to both cure the zombified villagers and battle the baddies who infected them.
The subsequent rooms are fully immersive. Participants must first work together to gather golden apples, snowballs, sugar cane, gunpowder, spider eyes(!) and other items by waving glowing cubes (they are cubes, but in Minecraft they are called orbs, such is the lore) and stepping on items as they are projected onto the floor.
All of these things come in handy in defeating the forces of evil and then mixing a potion to bring the villagers back to normal. Teamwork makes the Minecraft dream work. Helpers in each of the rooms keep participants focused on stockpiling enough of each item to achieve the goal and then have them work cooperatively on tasks such as mixing potions and creating enough obsidian to open a portal into a key room.
It’s all as high-energy as you want to make it. My 6-year-old and several players of similar vintage went nuts and remained fully engaged throughout, while most of us parents took in the cool graphics, snapped photos and helped out as needed. At the end, each team sees a tally of how many villagers they rescued, showing the power of cooperation in saving this microcosm of the world.
Kids leave with plenty of exploits to recount. Meanwhile, adults will appreciate a different score: ample free parking on-site. Tickets for the experience start at $28, and all participants under 16 must be accompanied by an adult. And yes, there are adult nights here as well, Thursdays from 7-10 pm.
Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue is in a limited run at EXP Rosemont.
Photo by Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue
