Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Low Down
You control your destiny. Or do you? Using the nostalgic 8-bit aesthetic of 1980s video games, Arcade’s interactive narrative explores the evolving relationship between players and avatars. This choose-your-own-path experience fully immerses players in alternate environments in a completely dark shipping container, using 360 degree binaural sound and sensory effects.
Review
Ready to play a game?
Arcade has returned to Summerhall after having to cancel last year’s appearance due to technical issues, confirming the overripe platitude that good things come to those who wait, because Arcade is an exciting and unnerving experience unlikely to be had elsewhere during the Edinburgh Fringe.
Players enter a tight space that wonderfully mirrors the classic arcades from the 1980s and stand in front of their own machines, where they’re told to put on a headset and get familiar with three parts of the game while the lights are still on: a button, a slot for tokens and a receptacle to retrieve tokens when they’re given.
Then the lights go out, leaving players literally and figuratively in the dark.
Players immediately become a character named Milk, and what follows is an instant descent into a dystopian world where choices are made in the moment (if you don’t press the button to answer yes to a question in one second, the answer automatically becomes no) despite any understanding of the gravity of the situation. Despite the initial nostalgic entryway of the arcade, it becomes clear very quickly that this game feels far more like Children of Men than Ms. Pac-Man or Galaga: the stakes are high and highly stressful.
To give any more details about the storyline or various choices offered will spoil the ride, so suffice it to say that the animated and buzzy chats among players after the game made it clear that no one had had the same experience. I played Arcade three times to get a sense of the possible permutations; the first and second games were so different that even now I struggle to wrap my head around the sheer number of possibilities Arcade offers its participants. And it’s quite clear that the show’s creators have more on their mind than simple gaming. All these variations lead to deeper philosophical ideas: In a world so full of uncertainty and violence, how much do our choices matter? And if they don’t matter, how would it feel to no longer be able to make any choices whatsoever?
With its exceptional sound design and exciting, relevant storyline, Darkfield, the company behind previous site-specific immersive experiences like Flight (which has returned to the Fringe this year and can be experienced at Pleasance Dome) and Coma (which deeply unnerved festivalgoers last year, including yours truly), has another well-deserved hit on its hands. Those who enter this Arcade should prepare to have their minds blown.
