Phone Detective

You take the role of one of the few remaining survivors of an apocalyptic event. Newspapers litter one of the early rooms and seem to hint at nuclear war, but the context is immaterial. From the moment the door closes behind you and you start to navigate the first dank corridor, torch in hand, you are as much part of the experience as witnessing it.

The use of smell (horrible throughout but different in each area) and team-based activities to find clues and explore rooms lifts the project far beyond your generic, London Dungeon-esque horror attraction. The foreboding atmosphere is simply impossible to resist: the strange, metallic groaning noises that soundtrack your journey, the use of light and shadows to suggest movement in the corner of your eye at every turn. Even the most cynical member of our group was playing along within a quarter of an hour.

Carl Christopher-Ansari, head of sponsorship for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, said that Punchdrunk had been on the company's radar for some time, but finding the right game to launch a collaborative project had been a problem. Resistance 3, a post-apocalyptic zombie shooter (with a seemingly huge marketing budget to boot) was the perfect fit, and Christopher-Ansari was keen to stress the effort made to recreate the "emotions" of the game in the production.