Review: Minecraft Experience - Villager Rescue

We grab our Orbs of Interaction and step into the Nether for Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue - a new immersive experience based on the best-selling video game.

Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

Minecraft, the open-world sandbox game adored by kids worldwide, is far and away the best-selling video game of all time. In 2023, it was confirmed to have crossed over 300 million sales, massively outselling its closest rival, Grand Theft Auto V, by around 125 million sales, and despite being 14 years old, it has a monthly player count larger than the population of most countries.

While fans of Minecraft around the world had been eagerly anticipating the opening of A Minecraft Movie, those in London had another reason to be excited: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue has also just opened. Following a successful run in Dallas last year, this immersive Minecraft experience has its UK & European premiere at Corner Corner - a new venue in what's quickly becoming one of the defacto locations for new immersive experiences in London - Canada Water.

Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

Aimed primarily at families, Villager Rescue invites guests to step into the Minecraft universe, where they're tasked with saving a group of villagers who have been infected by a zombie horde. Taking on the role of heroes, guests must work to craft a cure before time runs out while going through seven different rooms that are lifted directly from the game's diverse world.

It all begins with the Orb of Interaction - a glowing handheld device that acts as a multi-tool throughout the experience. With the flick of a wrist, it's able to chop down trees, craft items, open chests, fight mobs, act as a bow and arrow and sword, and transport resources. Following an introductory video featuring a duo of Minecraft characters, Tobin and Dayo, guests enter a woodland-themed training room to learn how to use their Orbs first-hand.

Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

With 360-degree projections on the walls and floor being rendered live in Unreal Engine, guests interact with the environment by waving or shaking their Orb of Interaction when standing on marked spots and can pick up items projected onto the floor by stepping on them. What these actions do depends on which item on the projected screens becomes highlighted - a tree will be chopped down for wood, an enemy knocked onto their back and despawned. The responsiveness of this project game world is pretty good, though sometimes you'll find yourself waving the Orb with nothing happening as a result.

In what would soon become a running theme of our visit to Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue, the younger visitors in our larger group were running around collecting wood and stomping on projected apples with speed and dedication while the adults in the group took a more laid-back approach to resource gathering, likely aware that we'd need to preserve our energy for what was to come.

With training complete, Tobin and Dayo guide guests through crafting tools and weapons by tapping their Orbs on chests or furnaces to collect resources and then placing them into the correct crafting table slots. It's a frantic game in which each crafting table is scored individually, allowing some light-hearted competition between guests. All of those resources are later used to expand and grow the village, which is presented on touch-screen displays in the following room.

Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

Those already familiar with Minecraft will likely be aware of what happens to the village once nightfall comes - a zombie siege spells disaster for the village population and gives guests their quest for the remainder of the experience: save the villagers (hence the experience's title..) Moving through different Overworld biomes, including a forest, tundra, and mines, guests continue to gather further resources by using their Orbs of Interaction to open chests, chop down sugar canes and beat up spiders.

At the show's midpoint, the most complicated room (for those unfamiliar with the game) has guests crafting Obsidian to build a portal into the Nether by combining water and lava. The Obsidian is transferred onto a portal until it fully lights up, which allows us to move out of the Overworld. Throughout the experience, there are a dozen or more real-world objects - like the portal - that respond to guests Orb's, which adds a much-needed element of tactility to the otherwise projection-heavy experience.

Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

From there, it's a hop, skip and jump across a floor made of lava to fight a mob in an arcade-style game that has guests throwing felt 'snowballs' at a projection of Wither Skeletons, Zombie Pigman and finally, Blaze, in a fire-filled landscape. Regardless of people's familiarity with Minecraft, this portion of the experience is the most engaging and fun - it's also the only section that the Orb's are needed for.

The previously mentioned energy conserved by the adults in our group was all but expelled following this section, with numerous comments about the experience being like a workout between older visitors. The younger guests showed no signs of flagging though...

Rounding off the experience, all of our gathered resources are brewed into a potion to save the villagers, with a practical Brewing Stand letting off smoke to show its complete. All visitors to Villager Rescue, regardless of age, are given a unique 25-digit code to redeem a Minecraft Experience Digital Cape in-game, which is a nice souvenir of their visit for Minecraft players.

Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

Judging by how much fun the younger members of our group were having, Villager Rescue delivers exactly what it promised: an opportunity for fans to step into the world they've spent countless hours exploring digitally in real life. While the experience might not convert non-gamers, it's packed with dozens of nods and small references to the original game that will delight long-time players. The opportunity to run around and play within such a faithfully crafted environment will also have a lot of younger die-hard fans smiling from ear to ear.

If you have kids who love Minecraft, you probably don't need this review to tell you if they'll enjoy it - as they almost certainly will. For adults who are unfamiliar with the game and are without kids, the likes of Immersive Gamebox or Escape Arcade will likely offer a more rewarding (though equally exhausting) experience.

Photos: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

★★★

---

Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue runs at Corner Corner in Canada Water until 29th June 2025. Tickets are priced from £27.00 for Adults and £22.00 for Children. To find out more and book tickets, visit minecraftexperience.com/london

For more reviews of immersive experiences like Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue, check out our recent reviews.