Review: BuzzAttack (London)
- Immersive Rumours
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
This interactive game show experience puts teams centre stage, but it falls short of delivering a memorable time for those behind the podiums.
Photo: BuzzAttack/Fever
BuzzAttack is an interactive game show experience inspired by the likes of The Price Is Right, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Across 60 minutes, groups of up to 12 people compete against each other across ten rounds of multiple-choice questions and mini-games in a TV studio-inspired set, complete with a large spinning wheel, smoke machines, and dynamic lighting.
The experience, which is produced by Fever in collaboration with Bombastik and Inventive Productions, has already seen successful debuts in Madrid and Lille and is the latest in a string of competitive gaming experiences to open in London in the last couple of years, alongside the likes of Prison Island, Enigma Quest's Escape Arcade and Boom Lab.
Photo: BuzzAttack/Fever
The experience begins with groups checking in at the venue's reception, which is designed to resemble the backstage of a TV studio, complete with colour bar walls and video feeds from inside each of the experience's four studios. Each player (or small group, depending on the number of people booked into a session) registers on a tablet and selects three specialist categories from an impressively large list, all of which will feature during the game.
With the list of categories ranging from the broad (2000s Movies, Pop Music, and Rock Bands) to the niche (French Fashion Houses, Minecraft and Roblox, and Prehistoric Life), there's enough choice to cater to basically everyone's skillset, even if your Mastermind specialist subject would likely be '2020s Internet Culture' or 'Obscure Harry Potter characters'.
With everyone signed in and the session's total of twelve specialist categories chosen, groups are ushered into their studio. Before the lights come up and the game is 'on air', there's a fairly long pre-recorded video from an unnamed woman surrounded by sound mixers, who monologues about the impact nerves can have on the human body and attempts to lead everyone in a rendition of Seven Nation Army as a vocal warm-up.
If we had to guess, we'd say that she's meant to be the studio's sound engineer, but it's pretty irrelevant, as she never appears again and is quickly replaced by the game's host - an unnamed AI voice - who guides groups through the remainder of the experience.
Photo: BuzzAttack/Fever
From here on out, the experience unfolds through a series of quiz rounds, all of which are presented in a different format but follow the same basic structure - teams earn points for correct answers, with the fastest to answer typically scoring more and those slower to lock in an answer receiving fewer points.
The opening round, Quiz Time, Old Bean, is made up of general knowledge questions covering everything from geography and films to music and languages, while Pick & Mix Quiz gives teams the chance to pick questions of increasing difficulty from everyone's specialist categories. Wipeout allows teams to rack up points by maintaining a streak of correct answers (though they'll lose them all if they answer incorrectly), and Noughts and Crosses has teams working together to beat the opposing teams in a round based on the pencil and paper game. Closing things out, Read the Room requires teams to disregard their personal opinions and vote for what they think the most popular answer within the session will be.
It may be down to the specialist categories chosen by the rest of our group, but nearly every question that came up during our play-through of BuzzAttack was easy to answer, and the experience was rarely challenging in the same way that any random pub quiz is. Because of this, the scores in each round were largely dictated by whoever locked in their answer first, meaning teams have to be correct and fast to get ahead.
Photo: BuzzAttack/Fever
Alongside the multiple-choice-based question rounds, BuzzAttack also features several arcade-style minigames, which are played at the podiums. Top Card and Odd One Out both require fast reactions, with teams needing to select either the highest value card or the card with a difference as fast as possible. Bash the Alien is a whack-a-mole-style game, with points awarded for each alien figure hit, and Simon Says asks teams to remember and repeat an ever-increasing sequence of button presses.
The final minigame, which plays out throughout the hour-long experience, involves the roulette-style spinning wheel in the centre of the studio, which either rewards or punishes teams when their turn comes around in between the main rounds. For the most part, the wedges of the wheel contain rewards, such as additional points or the ability to steal points from other teams, but it can also be pretty punishing, with teams potentially forfeiting half of their overall points if luck isn't on their side.
In an ideal world, every team would get an equal number of spins, but the logic behind which teams are given multiple goes is a little unclear, and during our visit, not all teams got a second chance to spin, which unevenly impacted the final scores.
Photo: BuzzAttack/Fever
Given that the experience is designed to emulate the experience of being on a television show, there's a surprising lack of cameras and live video footage throughout BuzzAttack. The central screens display the questions and explain the rules to each round, but there's very little shown on them to give the impression that BuzzAttack could be an actual shiny-floor TV show.
This issue is exacerbated by the show's AI host, who doesn't react to anything that happens in the studio and rigidly sticks to the experience's pre-written script, removing any possibility for spontaneity, banter and connection between the host and the contestants.
We'd have loved to see some cameras scattered around the studio, capturing which wedge the wheel lands on and players' reactions, and a human host who's able to respond to the game in the moment, as they'd have injected some much-needed energy into the game and have helped sell the illusion that BuzzAttack is a real TV show.
Photo: BuzzAttack/Fever
Despite an entertaining premise, BuzzAttack never quite manages to generate the excitement needed to make its game show format feel truly engaging. While an energetic group of friends could certainly create plenty of their own fun while playing BuzzAttack, the experience relies too heavily on players to provide that energy rather than delivering it through the gameplay.
With more challenging questions, a scoring system that leans a bit less on luck and a human host capable of reacting to the action as it unfolds, BuzzAttack could likely capture the energy and unpredictability of a real television game show, but as it stands, it doesn't deliver on the fantasy of stepping up to the podium.
★★★
[Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review]
BuzzAttack runs at the Rosewood Building near Hoxton Station. Tickets are priced from £16.90 per person. For more information and to book tickets, visit feverup.com
