Abduction: Abduction Enterprises

I’d originally expected to be able to only fit in one game at Abduction, but after discovering how good their third game was, I was delighted we’d managed to add their fourth to the schedule. The name Enterprises might not give away what the theme is, but the website artwork makes it clear with its big picture of Batman: where they talk about Abduction Enterprises, think Wayne Enterprises.

I think there was a plot of some kind, but my brain promptly interpreted the story and goal as ‘play with the cool Batman toys’.

The set design here isn’t elaborately beautiful and immersive in the way that some of the other top games were in Barcelona, but it still managed to give us a ‘wow’ moment nonetheless – the style here is focused less on deep narrative immersion and more on giving you cool, interesting challenges.

Several of those challenges are physical in nature. I thought Abduction’s previous game pushed the boundaries with the degree of physical challenge involved. Enterprises takes that to another level, with multiple steps where, on realising what we needed to do, I genuinely doubted whether we could do it. That shouldn’t be a reason for less physically confident players to avoid the game: it seems there are various alternative ways to deal with those points, given sufficient ingenuity and/or desperation. But I found it immensely rewarding to have a game that pushed us with physical tasks that were properly challenging, and to find that we were able to overcome them.

This was another gloriously enjoyable game, and our group was split on which of the two at Abduction we’d enjoyed more. For me, Exam won on overall enjoyment, but Enterprises had the edge on cool factor, and had maybe the single best moments of either game. I’ve played other games with a superhero theme; this might be the one that did the best job of making me feel like a superhero, not just a civilian in a superhero’s base.