What do you get when you cross the board game Clue with a Zoom meeting, a bunch of actors, a bunch of puzzles, and a bunch of strangers?
A whole bunch of fun for a Friday night.
It’s called The Secret Library.
I hesitate to post a review because I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for anyone who decides to give it a try. I found out about the Secret Library through an ad on Facebook and purchased two event tickets—one for myself and one for my son and his wife for their anniversary. Chris, Courtney, and I have a long history of playing board games together—including the aforementioned Clue—but we’ve missed out on a lot of gaming sessions this year. Years ago I played Clue with all four of my kids, and we each used a spiralbound notebook to take notes. Chris’s notes were the scariest because of his insane level of detail… and he always won, so we stopped playing after a while because the rest of us had learned our lesson.
Chris could have used a spreadsheet with details like this!
Anyway, this Secret Library, this virtual live-action board game seemed like the perfect substitute in these weird times. So, at 8:00 tonight, we all went in, each from our own house. The game allows a bunch of people on one screen/ticket, but I paid for two screens because Chris and I live 50 miles apart.
Kudos to the bunch of writers and actors who pulled this event together. (There are a bunch more time slots available in the upcoming weeks… and I gotta stop using the word “bunch” or you’ll think I’m bananas. And yes, I did that on purpose just now. I have no social life to speak of.) The writers and actors had to find a way to make their story interactive, interesting, and difficult without being vexing, especially since they’d have no idea what sort of people would be showing up on their screens.
You know, people like my son, who’s a web coder and knows his stuff. And also people like me, who couldn’t get her microphone to work properly for half the game, which was a source of amusement to some of the actors. (I caught a lot of ribbing from the Gardener, in particular.) Honest, I’m not a tech idiot. I’m a geek wannabe—I’ve been online since 1987, pre-Windows—but my microphone just wouldn’t cooperate. No, seriously. Quit laughing.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the Secret Library. Here’s an instructional screenshot we got not long before the game began:
The whole experience was a delightful and clever use of the technology available to us, at a time when actors can’t perform live and stage writers can’t get their work performed anywhere. Factoring in the fact that this is a relatively new use of these forms of tech, I applaud everyone involved for thinking outside the box to provide more than 90 minutes of fun, distracting entertainment. If you buy a ticket, and read the materials provided, and show up early to test your tech (which I totally did—honest! It wasn’t my fault!), you’ll quickly move beyond the tech and find yourself immersed in the story and the ongoing interaction with everyone around you, both actors and fellow participants.
Now that someone’s starting to test the boundaries of how to use interactive tech and webcams, I look forward to more such stories from creative minds like these guys. I hope I can find more experiences like this in the near future.
If you’re curious about the Secret Library and want to know more, try the link, or contact me at linda@lindaau.com. They gave us a discount code we can pass along to our friends, even the ones who tease me about my inability to get my microphone to work for the first hour.
Honestly, it wasn’t my fault. I tried a bunch of things to fix it. A bunch…
