What would you do to improve your social media status and become popular? If you answered “Enter a deadly game show where assassins try to kill you”, then Survival Games is for you. You’ve entered a competition to join Yvel, an elite social media platform, which is televised across the nation. The catch, you have to make your way through the arena where assassins wait in every corner, with one goal…to stop you making it out alive.

Fright Nights has long had a reputation as being a more hands-on event, with most mazes from 2011 onwards allowing actors to touch guests. This changed in 2020, when due to the Covid restrictions, actors were not allowed near guests. When Survival Games was introduced, it filled a gap that was missing in the line up: a hands-on, no hold-barred experience.

From the start of the experience, you are split up and separated, taking a trick out of Experiment 10’s book. A tense sequence then follows whereby actors grab you and push you into the maze. The first part from here is linear, but then after this, the maze becomes multi-route, with no clear way out.

This means that your experience can vary. Some people may be trapped in “the arena” for ages, other may find their way out quickly. Regardless of your time spent in here, you see a chaotic free-for-all where guests go anywhere, with anyone. Actors can go for conventional scares, to interacting more intimately with guests, making them crawl, stand against walls and more.

The finale makes it seem like people have won and escaped, before the twist: there are no winners in Survival Games. In its first year, the finale saw guests chased out in small groups by air cannons and an axe-weilding actor. From 2023, the finale has featured multiple actors with chainsaws, chasing people out and creating a classic run-out for everyone to see.

Whilst the story of the maze isn’t present much beyond the pre-show, the Survival Games experience doesn’t suffer for this. The maze is designed to be in your face, brash and visceral, which is exactly what Survival Games is from the outset. It doesn’t need a story, fancy effects or costumes, it just needs high intensity, and with that, it delivers every time.

All in, Survival Games is a chaotic scare maze, filled with in your face action and really including you in the fear. It is definitely not for those who are easily scared!