Life-sized Monopoly game hits Colorado | Arts & Entertainment

Everyone’s got a strategy when it comes to Monopoly.

Some players scoop up the high-rolling Park Place and Boardwalk properties. Others love to litter their properties with hotels. Some people prefer to stay in jail to escape moving around the board and paying rent.

Now’s your chance to put those schemes to work in “Monopoly Lifesized: Travel Edition,” an immersive and interactive experience based on the popular Parker Brothers board game that was first published in 1935. It’s open Tuesdays through Sundays through Feb. 9 at DCPA Off-Center at Broadway Park in Denver. It’s the first version of the experience in the U.S.

“Denver audiences have an appetite and love for immersive work,” said Courtney Ozaki-Durgin, Off-Center creative producer. “Many people have some sort of connection to Monopoly — it’s a favorite pastime of America, but to be able to explode that out into more of a realistic experience is what people are looking for. It also helps with building connection.”

Four boards occupy the Off-Center space, though players don’t actually walk around a game board. Instead they roll giant dice on a dice board and are told by staff members, who are costumed as Monopoly tokens (the playing pieces in the board game), what space they’ve landed on.

The team then goes into a corresponding room that represents the property or whatever the space is, where they have to solve puzzles and challenges similar to an escape room. If the team successfully completes the challenge, they get a chance to purchase a property, build a house or hotel on a property, or even break out of jail.

“Challenges have a mix of physical and mental puzzles and games,” Ozaki-Durgin said. “Breaking out of jail is similar to an escape room. They range from more tactile challenges to technological challenges. They’re all fun puzzles that ask you to access your creative thinking.”

People can come as individuals or couples, but will be slotted into teams of up to six people. Games are about 70 minutes long and winners get to take photos with a winner’s plaque and receive a free cookie and discounts at the installation’s Top Hat Bar.

“Monopoly Lifesized” is the latest in a series of immersive experiences by Off-Center, including “Darkfield,” where visitors experienced sensory effects and audio narratives as they sat in darkness inside shipping containers, and “The Infinite,” one of the world’s largest free-roaming virtual reality experiences where visitors explored the International Space Station.

“People enjoy that they transport you,” Ozaki-Durgin said. “Immersive creates embodied experiences and we crave that immediacy in connection. It gives us agency to dream, too. To imagine things to be more wondrous.”

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