No money is needed to take part in this survival game — all the organizers want is that precious blood of yours.

That’s right! The second edition of this escape game is being held by the Osaka Red Cross Blood Center to help promote blood donations. Anyone who donates blood at a Red Cross facility anywhere in Osaka Prefecture will be eligible to apply for Escape from the Abandoned Blood Lab II.

According to organizers Kuroneko Cube and the Red Cross, the backdrop to this adventure is as follows:

“You are extras in a TV show sneaking into and getting coverage of a laboratory that was closed down a few years ago. A long time ago a professor ambitiously worked in the lab, obsessed with ‘the evolution of mankind,’ and was highly regarded for many of his experiments. However, a few years ago the professor disappeared and the institute was closed and declared off limits. Last year, a group went in to investigate but also disappeared. Now the lab is thought to be cursed and everyone is told to stay away. But now you will enter to find out if the rumors of a curse are true…but can you come back safely?”

So it would seem that participants must use their wits to escape alive and solve the various mysteries of the abandoned blood lab, such as what the professor was working on, what happened to the previous group, and why an exposé TV program investigating a cursed lab needs extras on site in the first place.

Three games will be held on 11, 12, and 13 August at various times of the day. Despite corporate Japan’s recent best efforts to crowbar Halloween into the culture, August remains the traditional spooky season for haunted houses and horror films in the country.

Thirty spots are open for each game and the deadline to apply is 30 June, which should give people time to recharge their plasma if they happened to have donated recently. Applications for pairs are allowed and the winners will be announced and contacted in early July. So get out there and bleed for the Osaka Red Cross for this once-in-a-year chance that sure beats a cookie and paper cup of juice.

Of course…if you get to play the game and eat a cookie, boy, that’d really be something.

Source: Kuroneko Cube (Japanese)

Images: Kuroneko Cube