The Game Show Network has announced its expanded lineup for 2015, and along with your typical bingo-, trivia-, and dating-based shows, the network is trying to get with the times by launching unconventional game shows based on three hot trends of 2014: steampunk, apps, and scary elevators. (Efforts to develop a vaping game show were presumably abandoned.)
First is Steampunk’d, which unfortunately is not a Victorian-themed Punk’d spinoff but a competition series where contestants are “challenged to combine objects from past and present to create futuristic designs and inventions,” like iPhones with gears glued on them. Speaking of, then there’s App Wars, hosted by Danica McKellar, a.k.a. Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years, who will preside over teams competing to see who can come up with the best idea for a functional app.
But most intriguing of all is Hellevator, a horror-themed game show being developed by prolific production company Blumhouse Productions. Rather than test contestants’ knowledge of the genre, Hellevator will test their ability to survive an actual horror movie by transporting contestants to a warehouse “ via an ominous-looking elevator, where they compete in a series of scary, suspenseful and emotionally taxing challenges.” Those who “survive” the challenges—which, if horror movies have taught us anything, will all be spunky, vaguely tomboyish teenage girls—will be declared winners, and presumably sent to an insane asylum where their ordeal can start all over again the following week.