Electric Gamebox: Alien Aptitude Test London ’84 | Review

Alien Aptitude Test | It’s 1984, the aliens have taken over Britain, and they’re moving on to the next step of their invasion; grading the humans to see who is worth keeping around. Can you survive the scrutiny of these extraterrestrials as they grade your group from E- to A+? Your team’s teamwork, coordination, memory, and agility will all be tested as you blast blocks, dodge danger, keep up with the cards, and collect all the coins. Do you reckon your team’s skills are up to the challenge…?

Time Played: 60 minutes
Date Played: 10th October 2021
Party Size: 2

👽 Aliens? Check!
🌈 Funky multicoloured visors? Check!
🕺 Catchy 80s music? Check!
👾 Arcade style games? Check!

Electric Gamebox has all you could ever want for a fun afternoon out. That is assuming that all you want is to be put in a 360 degrees game room with your best friends and told to wiggle around to control arcade games on the walls. And yeah… Having now played I can confirm it is exactly all I want!

About Electric Gamebox Southbank

Electric Gamebox is a sensational new group activity that sits somewhere inbetween an escape room, the Crystal Maze, a retro arcade, and with a dash of augmented reality. It’s like nothing else, but fits so comfortably next to mini golf, escape rooms, or bowling on the “What shall I do with my mates this weekend” scale.

I’m pretty glad I’ve finally found something I’m good at too. From coming bottom of the leader board every time I go bowling, to falling over hundreds of times on the ice skating rink. This is a group experience for the gamers among us. If you can play pacman and bop your head to the rhythm, you’ll do well.

Their first site was in Southbank, London but they’ve since expanded to a number of locations around the UK and one in the USA. We visited Electric Gamebox in Southbank to try out their most iconic experience: Alien Aptitude Test London ’84.

Other games you can play at Electric Gamebox London include:

• The Ace Chase
• Alien Aptitude Test New York ’87
• Block Smash Mania
• Psychedelic Mansion
• Temple of Coins
• Ticket to Mars
• Temple of Coins
• Rescue the Royals

For escape room enthusiasts, we’d recommend Psychedelic Mansion, as we hear it’s a puzzle game – but honestly, they all seem like a lot of fun.

The Electric Gamebox Experience

We arrived in our team of two consisting of a 25 year old (that’s me), and a 12 year old. For us, the small team worked perfectly – but they do cater for teams of up to 6 and have multiple identical rooms and experiences for even larger teams to go head to head.

On arrival, you’re given a briefing and a coloured visor hat with what can only be described as covered in plastic bobbles on top. These are so that the room knows where you are at all times, as there are sensors on all the four walls tracking your every movement, jumping, ducking and so on. The technology is really nicely done, with some cool projection mapping and touch screen sensors, making for a fully immersive and interactive experience like no other.

The Imminent Alien Invasion

Our host was the enigmatic Dom, supported by his colleague, Ivy on the cameras. Dom explained as we went into the game that in Alien Aptitude Test that aliens had taken over Britain! Oh no!

Whilst there was nothing we could do to stop the aliens, we could at least try to get in their good books. In order to see which humans were worth keeping around, the aliens had started grading humans on a series of challenges. Each challenge tested a different aspect of humanity – our memory, our agility, and so on. So long as we could obtain a good enough grade, we’d survive the extra terrestrial apocalypse.

It’s a good job the alien’s testing involved games we were very familiar with playing!

In our hour, we played 4 mini-games. There was a pacman style game where we controlled a character collecting dots around a maze. We had to avoid ghosts, and avoid the walls, else our progress would be reset. Secondly, there was a pong style game where myself and my team-mate worked together to eliminate blocks in the middle of the one of the walls by hitting pixels back and forth. There was also an iconic matching game, where tiles would fly around the screen and we’d have to quickly find their match. Finally, my favourite, there was a dodgeball style game where blocks flew at you and you needed to collect good blocks whilst avoiding the bad blocks.

In all, our body acted as your controller. And honestly? I’m still aching a little bit! This post-pandemic body is not used to such exercise! Haha.

Just kidding… It’s not too strenuous, and the whole experience was very safe. Unless you’re hurling yourself around the room you won’t bump into anybody. It’s mostly just shimmying, jumping around, oh and high-fiving your team mates when you win, of course!

The Verdict

We earned ourselves a very respectable score of A- which, at the time of playing was 7th on the leader board for that whole day! At the time of writing, we’re 28th on the leaderboard for the whole month. Wahoo!

Leader board or not, we had an absolute blast of a time. In particular, this experience would be really good for an office teambuilding, a night out with friends, stag and hen parties, or just for escape room enthusiasts who want to try something a little different.

Book your own team adventure at Electric Gamebox London.