Like many companies, we wanted to do a year-end wrap up, but we were so busy in January (reasons below) that we couldn’t get to this until now. What follows is what Spectacular Disaster Factory (Kirsten & Aaron and friends) did from January 2025 to February 2026, and what we are looking forward to in the rest of the year.
January 2025
Aaron’s dad, who lives out of state, calls to check in on us whenever there’s a wildfire. The standard response is “Dad, we’re in the middle of an urban area, it won’t come to us.” That changed in 2025 due to the Palisades Fire. At worst we were two miles from a recommended evacuation zone and had our bags packed and destination ready. We were fortunate that the smoke from both blazes flowed around us. But we know people who lost everything.
The fires reminded us to experience life as best we can as often as we can.
February
We were honored to be invited to be the guest judges at the wonderful Imagi-Ne’er-Do-Wells immersive game show at The Obscure.
May
Wow! We were thankful to even be invited to the 2025 LA Immersive Invitational, an “immersive theater jam” where eight teams (immersive companies) have less than 48 hours to create a short immersive theater show, from concept to audience participation. The theme this year was music, and the work of SDF plus the skills and talents of Rachel Adams (Immersive Art Collective) and actors Tiffany Ogburn and Abigail Corrigan created “Stringed Instruments”, which received both the Audience Choice and Judges’ Choice awards (the latter a tie with the work of Spies Among Us). We also were interviewed by Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times!
August
We had a wonderful time in Northampton, Massachusetts as invited artists of Quonk, helmed by Jon Pedigo. We presented our use of live action role playing (larp) in interactive experiences and helped them stage Temp Cupid for a night.
January 2026
A very busy month, hence our delay in doing a recap. First there was a trip to Auburn for a Clark Ashton Smith conference, then the 40th anniversary of Enigma, UCLA’s sci-fi, fantasy, and gaming club (where Aaron and Kirsten connected and where we cut our teeth playing and creating larps). For Enigmaversary, we created and ran an Enigma-centric road rally/scavenger hunt across West LA. From the end of January and into…
February 2026
…we remounted One Last Thing Before You Go, our award-winning, solitary haunting experience for three nights, featuring two of the original cast members, Shoshanna Ruth Green and Brenda Gutierrez. We sold out 26 of the total 28 shows. Thank you to those who were able to experience it and of course to Brenda and Shoshanna for reprising their roles.
We might reveal our budget for the show in another blog post, if anyone wants to see it. It’s very small. If you are interested, comment or email and we’ll make an entry with the breakdown.
In between all of those events we also personally (not as SDF) experienced: Hatch Escape’s The Ladder, IKEA’s “Sleepeasy” immersive experience (does walking around themed bedroom displays count? We were there for normal IKEA reasons anyway.), The Cortege, Derek Fordjour’s Nightsong, Appleseed Avenue, Cradled, Astra Lumina and Krampus Cove. Plus, ran a ttRPG at Geeky Teas, game design workshops at WonderCon and San Diego ComicCon, ran Dreamland at GenCon, enjoyed the 30th annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® and a rejuvenating weekend vacation in Santa Barbara.
What’s Next for SDF?
We are finishing the layout and final proofreading for No Other Will But His, an original tabletop role-playing game that was created by one of Aaron’s former game design students. NOWBH is a feminist perspective on a segment of King Henry the Eighth’s reign. Players take on the role of one of Queen Katherine Howard’s—Henry’s fifth wife—historical Ladies-in-Waiting right before their queen is accused of treasonous adultery and sentenced to a beheading. You can get a free ashcan preview of the game here.
We have more immersive, interactive ideas we’re bouncing about the Disaster Factory floor, too–like running some simple larps that were important to us for one reason or another.
Stay tuned!