ICYMI: Innovative Live Action Party Gaming Coming To Malden

Today, a stranger in Malden can saunter down Pleasant Street and see Chinese food restaurants, a 99 cent store, an excellent selection of trade paperbacks at the Malden New England Comics, then soak in traditional Irish music and $3 PBRs at Hugh O’Neill’s.

Awesome? Pretty much! But plenty of streets in plenty of cities have comic book stores and Irish bars.

However, this summer - during approximately July or August - Pleasant Street will become the only street in the United States with a Boda Borg.

What is a Boda Borg? Put plainly, it’s an interactive entertainment complex comprised of an array of rooms in which visitors attempt to complete various “quests.”

Remember during the ‘90s when everyone thought virtual reality was going to be the next big thing? That’s what a Boda Borg “quest” is shooting for, except with way less computers.

Groups of four (or thereabouts) will enter one of the Malden location’s 18 quests - ranging in thematic intensity from “Spook House” to “Alcatraz” to “Farm” (as in, with chickens and cows) - and must complete feats of puzzle solving and/or physical endurance in order to enter the quest’s next room. The rooms increase in difficulty until the quest’s final stage, which requires the most comparatively herculean efforts for success.

Let’s emphasize “comparatively,” as Boda Borg is intended for all ages.

Boda Borg was invented in the mid-’90s, and originated in Sweden, just like music greats ABBA and Children of Bodom. The company’s owner and current CEO David Spigner hatched the idea to bring it to the U.S., and found his current business partner Chad Ellis, of Brookline, owner of Your Move Games, by searching “games” in a Harvard Business School alumni database.

Had it not been for Ellis’s insistence on the Boston area, the first Boda Borg in the U.S. probably would’ve ended up in California instead of Malden.

Ellis took Patch on a tour of the 90 Pleasant St. construction site - formerly the home of a Sparks Department Store - set to house Boda Borg. He explained why we should be stoked about this (for reasons aside from the taco bar slated for the lobby).

Patch: We understand that this really isn’t just a thing for kids?

Ellis: No, in fact, in Sweden, most of the guests are adults. It’s particularly popular with teenagers and college students, but the typical guest there is in their 20s or 30s, or it’s families. One of the things I like about it is, as a parent of two kids, you do a ton of things where you’re watching your kids have fun, but you’re not really participating, or you’re participating, but you have to hold back. It’s fun to play soccer with my daughters, but I can’treally play soccer with them, because I’m a giant human and they’re small. Boda Borg is really different, because the nature of the challenges are such that multi-generational teams do really well. There are some aspects kids are better at. There are some aspects parents are better at. One of the most effective types of teams they’ve seen in Sweden is parents and their kids. I think that’s really cool.

Given the insular nature of most entertainment these days, do you feel like there’s a greater need for participatory, in-person games like this?

Yeah, I think so, and I think people don’t necessarily want to be passive while they’re entertained. Seeing a movie is great. I like going to movies, but I think people get a lot more out of an experience if they’re being engaged. So you see things like 5 Wits, Room Escapes, LARPing (Live Action Role Playing). You see things where people want to engage in a situation that isn’t totally familiar, and they’re sort of learning what the environment is, learning how to deal with it, and accomplishing things. I think this is that, but sort of next level, because it’s physical and mental, and you have to work as a team.

You can’t do quests on your own. You will fail. And no one accomplishes quests in one try. It doesn’t happen. You have to explore and try things out, and learn what went wrong the previous time.

Imagine that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” where Indiana Jones is in the temple. He avoids all the traps, and he knows where the traps are, and he just barely misses the one guarding the statue. If that was a Boda Borg quest, and Indiana Jones was doing it one more time - he’d get the idol trap right and nothing would happen.

Throughout each quest, you learn. You say, “Why did we fail? Oh, I get it. When we were breaking out of Alcatraz, the spotlight found us.”

The variety of the styles of quests is intriguing.

Some of the quests are silly. In one of the Swedish Boda Borgs, there’s one quest where you rescue a space ship. That type of drama and excitement - we have that. But then we also have a quest called “The Bathroom.” It’s a bathroom. But we don’t want people to use it as a bathroom.

You’re going to have to double emphasize that.

Don’t worry...So, for Alcatraz, the entrance is a jail cell. In the first Alcatraz quest in Sweden, they made a complete jail cell, including a toilet. People used it. Now, when we make Alcatraz, we don’t put in a toilet. The Bathroom quest will have sinks and things - a suspended bathtub you have to move across the room - but no toilet.

That’s one of the things that’s kind of magical about Boda Borg. In Sweden, you have quests where a city’s been hit by an earthquake and you have to save it before there’s a gas tank explosion. Then there’s “Farm.” That’s one of our quests. One of the first rooms you go into is a chicken coop.

That’s a little less intimidating than Alcatraz or Spook House.

That was one of the first challenges I did when I visited the Boda Borgs in Sweden. I walked in and I’m like, “I’m in a chicken coop. What just happened?” Then you solve its puzzle, and realize, “Alright, I’m starting to learn a little about how Boda Borg thinks.”

Images: Boda Borg promotional pictures from Swedish locations.

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