tick tock unlock, which operates a number of immersive escape room facilities in the UK, is launching a multiplayer, multisensory vr game centre in leeds.

The first facility of its type in the UK, the Hyper Reality Experience Centre is scheduled to open on 22 April in the Trinity Leeds shopping centre. Nine more will open across the country by 2019.

The Hyper Reality Experience Centre is an eight-person, 15-minute VR experience that takes place in a 664sq ft (62sq m) game space, where players can move freely around and interact with the story and other players. The experience also includes the use of real-world sets, dummy props and special effects to stimulate the other senses.

Former JP Morgan executive and Tick Tock Unlock director Ali Khan is overseeing the business.

“Our Hyper Reality Experience centres will provide a new form of entertainment that is part video game, part virtual reality, part real-world, part theatrical production,” said Khan. “The centres will allow players to experience a free-roaming, live action challenge which has to be physically completed but which takes place in the playground of a virtual world.

“Participants have to interact with objects which, in the real world are dummy props, but when viewing through VR headsets become, say, an elevator door, a laser gun or a fuel cell. Players might feel the heat from a virtual fire or the draft from a mineshaft so that it will be difficult to distinguish reality from virtual reality.”

The UK launch follows a spurt of similar centres opening around the world, including from companies like The Void and Zero Latency.

Tick Tock Unlock, which has been operating since 2014, has sites in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. Small groups participate in the live action escape room experiences that include narratives like the Forgotten Tomb, the Asylum and Alice in Wonderland.

Locations for the series of Hyper Reality Experience centres have not been announced, but the upcoming centres will be larger than the Leeds one, at 2,000sq ft (186sq m) minimum.