Electric Gamebox at Lakesdie - Review

Electric Gamebox at Lakesdie Shopping Centre - Review

We went along to find out what Electric Gamebox was all about, as we are all lovers of video games and quite a competitive family, we thought this would be right up our street!

Electric Gamebox is a new interactive game, which you can play in teams from 2 to up to 24 players (although you can only fit up to 6 people in any one Game Box) where you work together as a team to beat various video games and it’s challenges.

Using the antennas on your head, the sensors pick-up your body movements and set you a series of challenges to collect points to beat the other teams on the leader board.

There are currently just four Electric Gamebox’s in the UK, with the aim of having another two by the end of this year (2022) We went along to the Lakeside venue, where they currently have a mixture of eight games to choose from, suitable for either younger families, or just for adults and teens.

For Families, there are three games to choose from, two x 30 minute games and one x 60 minute game. We chose the 60 Minute game and this is what we thought …

60 Minute Alien Aptitude Test

First of all, I need to say, our lad is 9 years old and LOVES anything computer games, so when the door opened and we stepped into our Game Box, he (and we) were in awe! We stepped into our very own computer game, rather excitedly and were very much up for whatever challenges were about to be thrown at us!

We put on our headgear (antennas) and excitedly braced ourselves for our first game of four. The first game was similar to the old-skool Atari Tennis game, where we had to run backwards and forwards to operate the moving bars up and down, in order to hit the bouncing ball, which broke down the wall of bricks for points. It certainly took some getting used to, as the natural thing was to jump up and down, rather than move back and forth - The kids seem to get this much easier than me!

The second game we played was a Dodgeball style game, where we had to keep our aim within a moving box and catch as many balls as we could, dodging any toxic balls, which took your score down!

The third was a Card Switch game, where lots of cards kept moving across the three walls and we had to find 5/6 of them when they stopped moving. This may have been our best game as a team!

Then lastly, there was a Pacman style game, where you ran around collecting as many coins as you could, without being caught by any ghosts or running into danger zones. We actually messed this one up to start with as we didn’t realise we could bank the coins as we went along, we thought we had to collect them all before losing a life. Luckily (and horrifyingly) the staff are watching your every (silly/serious/funny) move so it wasn’t long before someone knocked on our door to tell us we were playing it wrong! Once we realised though we were off and managed to do pretty well after that.

The over all aim is to start the game ranked as an ‘E-‘ and aim for a score of ‘A+’ Our final grade was a ‘B+’ so are gutted we didn’t play the last game right from the beginning! (not competitive at all!)

Our thoughts …

We wish there were more games to play and maybe a little less time on the ones we did play, within the hour. Each game lasted approx.15 minutes each and feel there could be room for one more, by reducing the time of the four perhaps. We felt that 30 minute games wouldn’t have been enough time for us to play, so opted for the 60 minute game option, it does seem a shame there is only one 60 minute family game to choose from and actually could have happily played more games for longer!

The price is a little expensive. At peak times you are looking at paying up to £29 per adult and up to £19 per child, for us that would come to £106 for one hour. If you include a lunch out, you are looking at spending nearly £200. A huge sum for a family of four! However, if you are a single person, grabbing some pals to go together, or a couple looking for something different, it is well worth every penny. I do need to add that off-peak times are a lot cheaper, so don’t let the peak-time charges put you off! (see price details below)

Regardless of the downsides above, we absolutely loved the experience, we loved working as a team, rather than competing against each other, as I mentioned, we are very competitive, so any game we play normally ends up with someone being grumpy, so because we were working together, it worked brilliantly. The 80’s music tunes were epic, the old-skool arcade feel was great fun and where else do you get to walk into an actual computer game?!

“We would totally recommend The Electric Gamebox to anyone, it is fun, competitive, team-building and incredibly unique. We all loved it and want to go back and do it again!!”

— Things for kids in Kent

To find out more information, including how to book your tickets please see Electric Gamebox’s website here.