I Fought Orcs in Boston and My Arms Have Never Been So Sore

I’m standing next to my friend on adjacent towers in a fantasy world, aiming bows and arrows at incoming enemies—dragons, orcs, and soldiers—trying to protect our village from attack. My arms are getting tired from holding up my bow, but we’ve made some progress. We’ve gotten to round six, our team of two racking up nearly 200 points, even as we’re slowly losing ground. Our village is near destruction.

To an outsider, we’re standing in the middle of what looks like a dance floor at Key to Amaze VR in Kenmore Square, strapped into VR headsets with controllers in each hand. But from our perspective, we’re fully immersed in the world of “Elven Assassin”—a sparkling, tropical ocean in front of us, towering palm trees surrounding us, the stone gates of our village at our backs. As we stretch out our arms, notching arrows into bows and releasing the controller’s trigger to shoot down enemies, our virtual selves match us move for move.

Key to Amaze offers dozens of VR options, and during our 40-minute window, we sampled mini golf, a pirate-era cannonball fight, and a zombie apocalypse survival game (unfortunately, we did eventually lose our elven city to the oncoming attackers). The full immersion was disorienting at first—we were completely blind to the real world, seeing only the virtual reality through our goggles. But once we adjusted to the physical movements—ducking, dodging, and moving our arms to shoot guns and swing golf clubs—the adrenaline started pumping and the competitive energy kicked in. It beat playing video games from the couch by a mile. Next time, we’ll be back with a bigger group of friends.

Fenway/Kenmore, keytoamaze.com.

This article was first published in the print edition of the December 2025/January 2026 issue as part of a winter activities package with the headline: “The Great Indoors.”