Neotropolis Festival

From: Neotropolis.com:

"From the same team behind Wasteland Weekend, Neotropolis is a 5-day fully immersive cyberpunk and science fiction desert festival. All attendees must wear theme-appropriate costumes, and be 18+ at the time of the event.

Neotropolis is an immersive sci-fi and cyberpunk-themed event that is part music festival, part desert campout, and part LARP from the godfathers of fully immersive festivals, Wasteland World.

A unique hybrid event, the 5-day festival included live bands, quest missions, DJs, laser tag battles, retro video gaming, hacking, camping, bartering and selling of themed goods, sideshows & burlesque, tricked-out cyber cars, technology displays, food vendors, robot battles, FREE alcohol (thanks to the BYOB event policy and community bar servers), costume contests, fully-immersive interactive environments, and much, much more.

The cyberpunk world encompassed many acres of beautiful land in the Mojave Desert (that is owned by the organizer’s company Wasteland World) including indoor and outdoor spaces, and enough neon to light up the desert for miles. For 2023, the event’s official entertainment lineup included Night Club, Megatronix, Night Rider 87, Let Em Riot, Starfarer, Nuda, Eclectotron, as well as The MxSFxT and Dayne The Gr8.

“We’ve simply created the future we always wanted,” owner and Event Director Jared Butler said. “Wasteland Weekend has been going for over ten years, bringing a post-apocalyptic Mad Max world to thousands of people, and now we wanted to branch out into a different kind of future.” Butler started his career in Hollywood, first in feature film development, then as a working screenwriter. In addition to creating immersive events, he is also an accomplished voice actor.

The faux neon outpost/city on an a fictional planet features a lot of user-generated content alongside what the organizers provide. Like the “tribe” camps at Wasteland Weekend, Neotropolis features “Factions” - fully-themed installations and camps created by attendees themselves. In addition to forming factions, attendees were encouraged to join one of three main “Allegiances,” which allowed them to go on specific quests and missions assigned by actors playing Allegiance leaders. Those same actors also performed occasional small story scenes, creating an evolving narrative to follow along with. The organizers plan to expand on this immersive theater aspect at future events.

“The event can be experienced on multiple levels,” Butler explained. “Attendees can just relax (in costume) and have fun dancing and listening to music, or they can dive in deeper and create a character that becomes part of the greater story.”

As at Wasteland Weekend, some kind of themed costume is required at all times at the event. This makes every attendee a participant, not merely a spectator.

“It’s unbounded display of creativity,” Butler said. “When the future we’re living in doesn’t quite measure up, it’s time to imagine a different one. And we’ve created a space where people can live in it for a few days.”

The futuristic city of dreams has vanished into the desert once again, but it will return, bigger and brighter than ever! Neotropolis will return, April 24th-28th, 2024. Tickets are on sale now.

Keep an eye out for updates to official photo galleries and highlight videos. Follow Neotropolis’ social media accounts for news and date announcements. Tickets for Wasteland Weekend 2023 are on sale now."

You can find the official Neotropolis website at www.neotropolis.com