New interactive gaming experience opens in Las Vegas

The floor pulsates with color, our toes illuminated by glowing, Tetris-like geometrical blocks.

“Game starts in 3-2-1,” a disembodied voice announces as two players get ready to zigzag across the room, racing from one luminescent patch to the next in a kind of high-tech hopscotch.

As the clock counts down, the pace picks up, lights and legs flashing by at an increasingly rapid pace.

In 90 seconds, it’s all over — save for the heavy breathing — here in the Mega-Grid, one of the more popular attractions at Activate, a new interactive gaming experience at Town Square that aims to transform visitors into human video game controllers.

“You become Player 1,” Activate General Manager Clay Haton explains as he leads a tour of the facilities on a recent weekday afternoon.

With corridors brightened by rainbow-colored LED lights — “It kind of looks like a spaceship,” Haton observes, and it kind of does — the winding, 13,000-square-foot venue features 15 mini-arenas, each with three to 10 different games that go up to 10 levels, creating more than 800 possible game combinations.

“No two experiences are ever the same,” Haton says. “No two visits are ever the same.”

Players select the game they want to play on a touchscreen outside the entrance of each room. The ones in blue are cooperative, in which two to five people per team can play together. The games in red are competitive, pitting players against one another.

The contests are simple in concept — at “Hide,” for instance, players must avert the gaze of five flashing eyes while rushing to press numerated buttons before time runs out — but challenging to keep up with as the levels increase.

“Everything is super tactile here,” Haton says. “You don’t need to put on any goggles or special equipment or anything to play these games. You just have to come in comfortable clothes, comfortable shoes — and be ready to work up a sweat.”

Founded in Canada, Activate has expanded to 75 locations around the globe, from Malaysia to Norway, with more than 40 in America.

The Vegas location is the second largest in the country, designed to be continually cutting-edge.

“Every new one we build, we keep advancing the technology,” Haton says. “If we have new games coming out, they can just go ahead and download them directly. You could come back in a month, and it could be something completely different, as far as some of the games. We can constantly change what we’re doing.”

When guests arrive, each player is outfitted with a digital wristband that keeps track of their gaming stats, which can be redeemed for prizes as points accrue. An hour of playing time costs $25.99 on weekdays, $29.99 on weekends. (An additional 30 minutes can be purchased for $5 any.)

To hear Haton tell it, some folks have swapped treadmill for Activate.

“We’ve had people that have quit their gym memberships and just come to Activate three times a week,” he says, “because they’re getting that energy output and forgetting that they’re technically not in the gym, but still burning those calories.”

He does offer one piece of parting advice, though.

“We definitely recommend stretching before you come,” he notes.