19/12/2025
We did Punchdrunk's latest "Lander 23" on Wednesday. Wanted to offer a review and some thoughts about it, as "live video games" are something of huge interest to me.
Let me start by saying what I think of Punchdrunk. I've done the Drowned Man, Burnt City & Viola's room.
I found the Drowned Man very interesting because it felt like the first immersive theatre I had done, and I enjoyed the novelty of it. I also enjoyed a lot of what I saw, the sets and in particular the David Lynch vibes. But the story escaped me and I struggled a bit with the FOMO and wondering if I was making the "right" choices (I recognise now there is no "right" in such things). I'm also not hugely into this kind of dance.
The Burnt City left me a bit cold, the material doesn't hugely excite me. I did love the bar/cabaret part though, stayed there a long time.
Viola's Room - I liked that this was different and a more linear, clearer story. But the subject matter didn't totally captivate me and whilst there were some nice things to look at/experience, it again left me a little cold.
But although I've never raved about any PD productions, I know many do and I'm really grateful that things like the above exist and push the medium. Art shouldn't appeal to everyone.
With Lander 23, I knew little going in but that it was what I call a "live video game". This prospect excited much more and I tried to keep expectations in check. A "live video game" is exactly what it sounds like - you get to do something you normally only find in a video game but for real, where you are a protagonist and have agency and choices matter - but it's very much a game and there are ways of doing better/poorer and potentially winning or losing. I love the concept of this and I hope and think it's something we'll see more of. I've even designed things like this as part of Midnight Madness. In 2023, I had teams trying to solve puzzles in a room where creatures roamed who could be evaded/repelled but getting caught had consequences. I've also played some other games/experiences in this arena. The now-shut "Stay in the Dark" by DarkPark in Rotterdam felt a lot like some horror/survival video games, where you were evading an antagonist in a truly giant building/set and I really loved that. "KONG" in Barcelona had a lot of video game elements/vibes (although many more escape room type puzzles) and even ended up with a "boss battle" at the end. And then there's "Demise of the Gricers", which blew my mind with it's set, roaming antagonists, "cut scenes" and game mechanics that felt very at home in a video game. It's the best example I've personally played (that's still available) of what feels like a "live video game". I'm going to DarkPark's latest in this arena in January and looking forward to that.
So what did I think of Lander 23? My overall feeling was disappointment. If you've never done anything like this "live video game", you may well enjoy it for the experience of doing something new, like I did with Drowned Man. It's nothing like an escape room, there are no puzzles. It's nothing like immersive theatre or PunchDrunk's previous things. You are very much the players in this game. You have to play as a group of 4. There are 2 roles to play in the game and you get about 15 minutes of actual game time in each role. In one, two of you are monitoring the other two "in the field", able to see the game area as a map, where your team are, the antagonists are and the objectives are. You talk to them via headsets and tell them where to go. Then you swap roles and you get to go into the game area, to try and complete objectives worth points. There are multiple roaming antagonists to evade and 3 lives that can be lost (I'm not sure what happens if you lose all 3, we only lost 1). So far, so good, although you don't really need 4 people, you could do it with just 2. There are many teams playing at the same time and that's OK - although you deal with the same antagonists in the same space, you have different targets/objectives, so you don't really clash. You score points (although I don't recall being able to see the total until the end) and there's a leader board with all the other teams who were playing at the same time. We came top, which felt nice.
What didn't I like?
The onboarding was slow, painful and confusing. You're given a comic to read in the waiting area which explains the roles and objectives.
Some of the objectives (the tapes) were unclear as to why you would do them and their value - I'm concerned that you could have done these and not scored anything for them. Others, there were clear points for. We sat and waited, unattended for some time. We eventually went through to "kit up" and there was a lot of waiting time. It just felt like the whole onboarding could have been smoother and you always want to learn things by doing, rather than reading about it.
There was little to no story - that can be OK for a short experience like this and to focus on the game, but it's nicer if there is more here.
The game interface for those in the map-monitoring position was sub-optimal. Many elements and how you controlled the map and its display were good. Dealing with the "uploads" was fine and added an element of collaboration. But there were a number of switches there that went unused and felt like unnecessary noise - keep the UI clean and just what you need or at least make it clear what you need and what is decor.
The set is very much the Burnt City (although you only play in what felt like a quarter of that whole space) but with various plastic sheets over it and a few simple tents with boxes in. They've added some things to hide behind. But you can see it's the Burnt City, some of the Greek signs are visible, ditto things that just didn't feel "right", given we were supposed to be exploring a planet.
The antagonists could have looked much stronger in terms of costumes and made some kind of sound/noise/talking to add atmosphere.
Some of the audio volume needed to be tweaked to hear properly. You can adjust some of it but that felt confusing as my memory is there were 4 volume dials and only 2 of you with headsets.
Overall, it just felt it had much more potential than was offered. The other things I've done/experienced felt better designed overall, particularly the onboarding. So I wouldn't personally recommend it particularly, but that's largely based on what else I've done in this area. If you've never done anything like it, you may well get a lot more out of it than me. But I'm always grateful to see things like this, because I really want more experiences like this - because who doesn't want to play video games in real life?
