Overview
Tomb Raider LIVE Experience
Camden Stables Market, London
Client: Dead Walk Designs Ltd
Project Type: Immersive theatre / Escape room hybrid
Services: 3D modelling, rendered visuals, thematic design support
Status: Delivered 2020
In 2022, Dead Walk Designs commissioned us to support the creative development of Tomb Raider: The LIVE Experience by producing a detailed 3D model and a suite of rendered visuals for MDM Create, working alongside Little Lion Entertainment.
Our role was to help visualise and develop the thematic environments that would underpin this ambitious immersive theatre attraction, ensuring gameplay, narrative, and physical space worked seamlessly together.
Tomb Raider Live Experience – Entrance Statue
Our Role
We supported the design of a hybrid escape room and physical obstacle course, creating immersive environments inspired by the latest Tomb Raider games. Using 3D modelling and high-quality rendered visuals, we explored how cinematic scenery, interactive elements, and gameplay mechanics could be woven into a cohesive visitor journey.
Guided by a clear and well-developed brief from MDM Create and Little Lion Entertainment, we relished the creative challenge of translating fast-paced, story-driven gameplay into believable, functional, and dramatic physical spaces.
Our visualisations helped:
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Communicate design intent across creative and build teams
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Test spatial flow, sightlines, and gameplay integration
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Support decision-making ahead of fabrication and installation
Outcome
MDM Create brought the attraction to life, delivering an experience that is bold, kinetic, and visually striking. The final result is a richly layered adventure that balances spectacle with interaction — allowing players to move, think, collaborate, and explore within a fully realised Tomb Raider world.
The completed experience stands as a powerful example of how strong visual development and early-stage design support can help ambitious immersive concepts transition smoothly from idea to reality.
Players Explore the Canaza Caves
Design Development Through Visualisation
Design support and 3D visualisation for a large-scale immersive attraction blending escape-room gameplay with physical obstacle courses. Working alongside Dead Walk Designs, MDM Create, and Little Lion Entertainment, we helped shape cinematic, story-driven environments inspired by the Tomb Raider games, supporting the project from creative intent through to build-ready clarity.
Why This Matters
Projects like Tomb Raider: The LIVE Experience demonstrate the value of investing in robust design development early. By resolving spatial layout, thematic intent, and gameplay integration through detailed 3D modelling and visualisation, complex immersive attractions can move forward with greater confidence. This approach reduces uncertainty during fabrication, supports clearer communication across creative and technical teams, and helps protect budgets by identifying challenges before they reach the build phase.
For clients, this means fewer late-stage changes, improved programme certainty, and an experience that delivers both creatively and commercially.
Zone Overviews
Zone-4 Cargo Ship
Zone-6 Canaza Cave
Supporting Clarity Through Design
Our visualisation work played a key role in expressing design intent spatially. By making ideas tangible early, we helped support shared understanding between stakeholders and identify potential challenges before fabrication.
This process helped streamline decision-making and supported a smoother transition from concept to delivery.
Key Takeaways
Alongside visual impact, our design support considered how environments could be fabricated, installed, and operated efficiently. Adaptable scenic thinking and practical construction strategies helped support cost awareness, build efficiency, and long-term use.
Interpreting creative intent through design.
Our role focused on translating an established vision into clear, spatial ideas that could be developed and delivered.
Design support that builds alignment.
Visualisation helped bring teams together around a shared understanding of environment, flow, and interaction.
Balancing ambition with practicality.
Design decisions were made with fabrication, installation, and operation in mind.
Supporting long-term value.
Adaptable, modular thinking helped promote efficient use of resources and asset longevity.
Early Design Resolution (Industry-aligned observations)
Large-scale immersive attractions consistently prioritise early design clarity, recognising that decisions made at the concept and visualisation stage have the greatest influence on delivery, cost, and long-term success.
Our design support aligns with three widely recognised industry observations:
Early Decisions Shape the Entire Experience
Clear Visual Intent Reduces Risk
Longevity Is Considered from the Start
Early Decisions Shape the Entire Experience
Industry observation:
In themed environments, the majority of critical decisions, such as spatial layout, circulation, sightlines, and scenic hierarchy, are resolved early. Later stages focus on refinement, not reinvention.
Design implication:
Early visualisation helps ensure creative intent is embedded in the structure of the experience, rather than added late through surface detail or technology.
Clear Visual Intent Reduces Risk
Industry observation:
Major attraction developers place strong emphasis on communicating ideas visually, ensuring that creative, technical, and delivery teams share a common understanding from the outset.
Design implication:
3D models and rendered visuals act as a shared language, reducing misinterpretation, late changes, and unnecessary rework during build.
Longevity Is Considered from the Start
Industry observation:
Long-term operators design environments to be adaptable, maintainable, and resilient, recognising that immersive assets must perform repeatedly over time.
Design implication:
Considering modularity, access, and material strategy early supports longer asset lifecycles and more responsible use of resources.