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White Noise: Report in!

Liam finally gets eaten. Pic by James Taylor

Liam finally gets eaten. Pic by James Taylor

 

Ladies and gentlemen – thank you. Thank you very much. As we’re sure you’re all aware, White Noise was rather good.

What follows is a bullet-point list of things we remember happening. We’re sure there were far, far more than this, but we can’t be everywhere until Mary finally perfects her Nightmare Science Zombie Hivemind Matrix. So please, please tell us what we missed – leave a comment here, blog about it and send us a link, or email us if you’d like. We’ll collect them up and post them here for posterity.

What happened at White Noise

  • After removing melee weapons and safe zones from the game – and omitting to tell the players exactly what they were looking for or where to take it when (and if) they found it – the game turned into something of a glorious bloodbath…
  • … aside from the second run, where we handed out a few extra and let a team of mime zombies have free run of the basement. They were incredibly creepy, but their propensity to get stuck behind invisible walls limited their effectiveness…
  • … so that run ended with an epic pitched battle in the main concourse of the Mall, with a huge group of players pumping round after round into a committed, terrifying group of the undead. It was so much fun that frankly we didn’t want to stop the game.
  • We saw one man, on the last run, sacrifice himself by screaming for the zombies to eat him so that his friend could get to the exit.
  • On the first run, one team went in as burglars with a large holdall bearing a £ sign. During play, we saw them run past us with the bag in one direction. There was a lot of shouting and gunfire, and then an entirely different team ran past with the bag, yelling “Don’t drop the money!”
  • Liam, as Stan the Accountant, set up a whole survivor’s station complete with contaminated food and water, grubby blankets and cryptic signs.
  • We had zombie-killing teams of priests armed with protest signs, Zombaid workers with collection buckets, health and safety inspectors with a special zombie warning horn, terrified scientists, businesspeople from a rival corporation, cowboys with hobby horses, and genuine Cockney urchins (guv’nor). Did we miss any? We probably did.
  • Grant spent 15 minutes hyperventilating on the balcony and watching his team die horribly, on the first run he’s played in 3 years.
  • Lux Lisbon came along to film a music video, and somehow managed to make the game even more fun, what with their Tomb Raider / KISS / Vietnam war costumes and general willingness to die over and over again while wielding massive foam guitars.
  • THERE IS MORE. So much more. We’ll post up more as we think of it and as you guys remind us. We’re very tired right now, and we’re pretty sure we’ve just accidentally dyed all the White Knight costumes a fetching shade of pink in the washing machine.

What happens next?

As always, if you have photos, videos or other media you’ve taken during the day, or if you blog about it afterwards, please do let us know in the comments or send us a link so we can share it far and wide. There are already a few pictures floating around on Facebook – we’ll collect the public ones on our page.

Enormous thanks to the crew, without whom we wouldn’t have been able to run the game. Seriously, those guys in the orange T-shirts – and Leech masks, and White Knight costumes, and flashing drone head torch affairs – they made the game run smoothly and kept all the tedious admin in order, as well as scaring the crap out of the delicious players on a regular basis. We can’t thank them enough.

And finally: we don’t know for certain yet where or when the next game will be. It’s unlikely to be in the Mall for a little while, but we have a couple of other potential venues in mind. As soon as we know more, you guys will be the first to know.