With the concept of the metaverse now enjoying its days of sun thanks mainly to Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook rebranding, it's not surprising to see how the concepts are affecting all sorts of real world businesses. And this of course includes escape room games. By allowing people to play using either AR or VR, then a new dimension to buy into the gameplay becomes available. Also, think of all the new scenarios that can be invented with code in a virtual world. One company taking this approach head on is LOST.
The Hong Kong-based, real-life escape games company will be launching the very first escape room game on a metaverse. Hopefully, from the 15th of May 2022, you'll be able to enjoy playing virtual escape games whilst at the same time earning rewards. The company was founded in 2013 and now has over 14 branches around the world, though their main headquarters are in Hong Kong. Along with their sub-brand, LOST Junior, they are promising players a unique gaming experience, thanks to innovative storytelling and exciting new themes. With these they hope to encourage both self-development,confidence and social skills for both adults and children. Later on they plan to offer their services to corporate entities, as well as schools and shopping malls. The promise is to develop games which create an OMO (online merge offline) experience thanks to being based within the metaverse itself.
As expected from a platform that promises a real time experience in multiple universe scenarios, LOST has chosen a number of creative experiences for their new players. As such each game is inspired by myths, historical facts and also fictional events. The initial plan involves an incredibly immersive experience. And typically, it will take place within some form of adventure play-through. Though they haven't said whether they'll be making use of either VR or AR, they are saying that players will be able to switch seamlessly between both the physical and virtual worlds. In fact, the game is set-up in such a way that the real physical world and the virtual one will offer various tasks from which the players can earn tokens and NFTs.
In many ways the game is not moving that far away from that traditional brick and mortar escape room game we all know and love. It's still going to be based around riddles and puzzles, as well as unlocking treasure boxes as you move through an immersive narrative. Just as in a regular game, solving and utilising these clues and hints will allow you to make your way out of the room within a certain time frame. Nevertheless, the fact that they are able to switch between the virtual and physical worlds whilst simultaneously playing together is going to prove an interesting concept. Unfortunately, the company is big on promises, but so far has nothing material to show. So it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in real time. The company also put a great deal of emphasis on the fact that players are able to earn through their NFTs and proprietary metaverse tokens.
Mr. Rick Woo, the founder of LOST, stated: "The whole concept of LOST in Metaverse is to create a play-to-learn, play-to-earn experience where players can form teams with friends online and solve mysteries together in the comfort of their homes. Riding on this OMO (online merge offline) business model, we will explore and welcome cooperation with different partners to build their own branded escape rooms to raise awareness and market value. In the future, LOST looks forward to building a virtual world based on Web 3.0 and will be named as LOST Island – an ultimate game world of a gaming ecosystem with infinite possibility, defining the new GameFi."
Another part of the LOST escape room game experience is going to be focused on children between the age of 6 and 14. These escape rooms fall under the LOST Junior title and are designed to offer an educational experience along with storytelling. They hope this will encourage the children in their studies, as well as allowing them to collect rewards for individual players or school teams.
Like many of today's companies who are interested in jumping into metroverse projects, LOST certainly has very lofty aspirations.They see the introduction of their metaverse escape room games as just the beginning of an entire gaming world built for all types of players within the metaverse space. As Ricklatest stated, “In the future, LOST looks forward to building a virtual world based on Web 3.0 and will be named LOST Island – an ultimate game world of a gaming ecosystem with infinite possibility, defining the new GameFi.”
