Team Building + Activities

Housed in a 30-year-old warehouse downtown, the venue's decor is designed to be imperfect and nostalgia-inspiring, with irregular detailing, mismatched wood textures, and simple string lights. At one end of the space, a shipping container serves what organizers call “farm to circus cuisine”—fresh, organic twists on traditional circus food. Signature drinks are also designed to be an experience, incorporating elements like fire and liquid nitrogen.

In one area, a robot bartender creates and serves drinks. (Don't worry, a human bartender is on hand to interact with the robot and make sure nothing goes wrong.)

In addition to a 100-person event room, a second-story lounge area can be rented for events, and has couches, TVs, and old-fashioned board games. When it's not being rented, visitors are encouraged to grab a drink and sit there as long as they’d like. “We wanted to create this environment where people could just come and play,” said Two Bit Circus president Kim Schaefer.

Club 01 is specifically designed for groups, with a stage and seating for 100 people. Guests sit at tables with touch screens, and can be broken into groups for trivia games. The space also hosts wine tastings that use the technology to teach about different ingredients.

Roughly 20 percent of the venue is made of up virtual-reality experiences. While some are solitary experiences, organizers really wanted to focus on the group capabilities of VR. In the Hologate, for example, four people can team up to fight robots. Karaoke-style private rooms that offer VR can also be rented for groups as large as eight people.

A main draw for the public is the arcade area, which has 27 different games. While many of them resemble typical arcade games, most are infused with updated technology that allows the content to be switched out as needed. Many of the games also require some level of physical exertion, such as the Twister-inspired Button Wall, which gets the heart rate going and encourages interaction.

Some arcade games require as many as six players—which organizers say was intentional to promote face-to-face bonding. “People show up to events and places like this in pairs, in threes, but nobody shows up in sixes,” explained co-founder Eric Gradman. “So you’re almost guaranteed to be standing across from someone you don’t know. And one thing we’ve discovered running games like this is that people who play together, stay together, and keep wandering around the park together. You make new friends around games like this.”

The Midway is a carnival-inspired area that fuses technology with old-school games, such as one where guests swing a physical wrecking ball at a virtual skyscraper, trying to break it down.

Certain aspects of the space just make a good photo op, like the Media Pollution room in the Midway. Guests sit in chairs and see their faces appear on TV screens.

Four distinct "story rooms" encourage small groups to work together in an immersive experience. “We think of escape rooms as a subset of a much bigger category we call story rooms,” said co-founder Brent Bushnell. “What happens if the story is not about escaping the room, and you want to float down a haunted bayou, or pilot a spaceship, or explore a maze?” (Note: These are all options available at Two Bit Circus.)

In addition to the formal games, Two Bit Circus also has a series of “meta games,” according to Bushnell. Guests can get a ball from a machine that will send them on small adventures leading to secret closets and rooms. “We really want to reward the curious,” he said.