This weekend I participated in the excellent Journey to the End of the Night. Journey is the annual capstone to the always fun outdoor games festival Come Out and Play.

This was my first year participating in Journey and it was a blast. The goal of Journey is to make it from the start zone to six different checkpoint stations across the city, get your map stamped, and then make it to the home base. However, there are enemy zombies everywhere and if they tag you, you become a zombie too. The checkpoints and public transit are safe zones where you can’t be tagged; the rest of the city is a danger zone. The game takes place over about four square miles.

The game was so much fun. I stuck with my roommate Adam and we managed to complete the race in about 3.5 hours and come in 30th place (out of maybe 500-1,000 players). We stuck mostly to public transit and were able to navigate a few buses directly from one checkpoint to the next. We only had a few close encounters with zombies and were never chased. Many others were not so lucky. Friends were caught in the opening minutes and spent the next few hours tagging tons of players.

Overall a great night and I will definitely play again next year!