Minecraft Experience London, review: You're better off giving the kids an iPad for an hour

Telegraph

06-04-2025

As an indication of how poorly thought through Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue is – they don't even make you exit via the gift shop. While that's a relief to parents, who'll already be shelling out this Easter for the critically mauled Minecraft film, it's symbolic of a half-hearted, loveless immersive experience that leaves plenty of stones (or should that be blocks?) unturned.
In a cavernous multi-use space in Canada Water, eager Minecrafters can enter the world of the all-conquering, block-based video game, exploring seven interactive rooms in which you build, craft and fight your way through a scantily clad narrative about saving a village. In the plus column, some of the rooms, with enormous projections from floor to ceiling, looked fantastic, while my children (seven, five and two) were always keen to get stuck into the games.
Easily the best touch was the Orb of Interaction – a handheld block given to each player, with which you interact with the world around you, whether that's chopping down trees, crafting potions or fighting off zombies. When it was time to move to another room, it would flash and vibrate, as if your food was ready at a nice National Trust cafe.
The video game elements were a let-down, most of them being a variation of 'swing your orb up and down', and there was never a sense that your actions mattered in the slightest. Much of it reminded me of the mildly engaging video-game sections you get on kid-friendly roller-coasters, only without the benefit of being on a roller-coaster. Some of it was terribly executed – one room involved everyone jabbing at a touchscreen village with no idea why or what was happening, while the grand finale – chucking balls at a big piece of cloth – had the air of something cobbled together at the last minute by contestants on The Apprentice.
All of which could be forgiven, indeed enjoyed, if there was a captivating narrative or any sense of theatricality. Instead, we shuffled from room to room, usually via black-curtained corridors, where perfectly nice, green t-shirted staff attempted to explain the rules of the latest 'swing your orb' game. There was a plot, apparently, about villagers and potions and zombies, but I know that from reading the website when I got home.
Every game you played felt like an existential exercise in pointlessness. 'Collect the mushrooms!' encouraged one kindly green t-shirt. We did. 'Try to get to 300!' We tried. But no one explained what would happen if we didn't. As a piece of immersive theatre, it's amateur.
To give it its due, the whole 45-minute event did accurately mirror my children's experience of playing the actual video game - ie aimless hacking at buttons with an uncertain outcome – and they did find it diverting enough. Yet Minecraft is about creativity, adventure and freedom, and this lacklustre offering brought vanishingly little of each, giving parents the strange feeling they'd have been better off giving the kids the iPad for an hour. Still, it's better than the film.