Scare LA 2017: ZTag Back To Being Zombies

One of them most interesting parts of ScareLA has been the evolution of ZTag. Which made another appearance over the course of two days of the Halloween in the summer celebration. ZTag is essentially a LED smart badge that can glow different colors. The game revolves around you avoiding zombies and becoming the undead. This of course adds to the experience of wandering through a convention hall as you're not only there just for the con, but to avoid zombies or in some cases infect others.

You see, how it works is that if your badge glows red you've be turned into a zombie and now you  can turn other badges red from the normal green. Like in previous Scare LA incarnations of the game, if you win, your badge LED turns white and can heal those bitten; those turning red from zombie attacks.

one of the factions

Now the badges bring out a sense of gameplay akin to Pokemon Go, though you're not constantly looking at your phone. At this year's Scare LA you were looking for six different locations around the convention that each had an item to help out your cause; more on that later. You had to visit these locations and avoid becoming a zombie.At each location your ZTag would flash rainbow colors to show you got the item. There's no psychical item to get. Visiting each location and getting what you need would  turn your LED white, making you immune to zombies.

another faction

If you wanted to help out your faction you would head all the way back to ZTag booth and give a point to your faction. Now here's where a brand new story comes about. And sadly it was hard to hear those who were telling it, as placement of the ZTag booth was right near live music.

Rock-N-Roll dead clowns can make it hard to hear.

Anyway, the basic story I gathered had four factions vying for power in what was left in LA after a zombie outbreak. Each represented by an actor telling you their side of the story. I want to give the actors some more credit, but I could hardly hear each of them telling me their faction was the best. So in the end, the games not only survival, but a team effort. There was a wonderful big scoreboard to see how many people came back alive and for what team. Each team by-the-way was kind of based around and area of LA.

ZTag was playable for $10 at ScareLA, that would be returned to you after your play through or if you wanted to keep the ZTag, they would keep your cash. You can try it at home as they start selling it on Amazon starting three months ago. You can get a two pack with some lovely packaging here.

From what I was told by the owner, ZTag will have a dedicated area to play for at least one event this October in Santa Clarita, where the company is based. So look forward to another Halloween adventure being added to what looks like an ever growing list of  Halloween activities for our Halloween Guide to be published in late September.