Are you ready to blast your way to become the newest member of the Vicious 6? Illumination’s Villain-Con Minion Blast will officially open on August 11, but the attraction is currently in technical rehearsals at Universal Studios Florida.

As part of the Villain-Con Minion Blast experience, Universal has debuted a new connected gameplay feature through the Universal Orlando app. The new feature allows guests to create a custom profile and sync their blaster at the attraction to keep track of their scores and much more. Once you choose your villain name and icon, you can connect with friends, complete missions, collect virtual trophies, pick up loot, and track progress during repeated visits to Villain-Con Minion Blast. How does it work? Let’s take a trip to Villain-Con and find out.

Villain-Con Minion Blast App

Villain-Con Minion Blast opened at Universal Studios Florida for technical rehearsals on July 15 and has been operating intermittently ever since, but the promised feature of syncing scores with the Universal Orlando Resort app was not yet available until now.

Once you download the Universal Orlando app, open it and find the “Villain-Con Connected Gameplay” section on the first page.

Team Members can assist you or you can scan one of the QR codes in the queue if you’re having trouble locating the connected gameplay in the app. Once you open the page up, tap “play” and you can create a profile.

The app will give you a brief introduction and explanation of how to use the different features, but the Team Members are also happy to help. The Team Members we spoke with were all extremely knowledgeable and did a fantastic job explaining all the different features in the app.

Under player settings in “options”, guests can choose their own name and icon for their profile. This page also allows you to connect with other players and add more players. Choose your name, character icon, and background color to create your profile. The name on your profile will appear on your blaster and on the scoreboards.

You can create multiple players in one app, which is perfect for parents and kids. Once everyone has their blaster, you will switch to each player to connect their blaster in the loading area.

You can find other players and follow them, too. This is a great way to connect with friends and family for competitive play. Now that we’re all set up with our profile, let’s explore some of the fun new ways to play.

One of the best parts of this app is that it creates new challenges to keep you coming back. There is a page of “trophies” you can unlock by completing different tasks. Clicking on one of these will give you a description of what you need to do in order to unlock that achievement.

For example, to earn the “Derby Destructor” trophy, you must destroy 25 of Svengeance’s roller derby bots. The tasks vary in difficulty, so some will be more challenging than others.

Under options, you can get gameplay tips, learn about unlocking skins, collecting loot, and unlocking perks. Collecting loot refers to picking up virtual “collectibles” both inside and outside of the attraction. There is a list of virtual items you can collect by interacting with specific objects around Minion Land and by blasting items during the ride. Like trophies, the collectibles will show up with a lock symbol next to them until you find them.

There are “Outside” and “Inside” collectibles to find. The ones you find outside of the ride will be collected by tapping “Collect Loot with Phone” and touching your phone to the item. It will then pick up the virtual item for your collection.

As you go through the actual attraction, keep your eyes open for other collectibles from the list. You can pick these up by blasting them on the screen. Some of these items can be tricky to spot amidst the chaos, so be sure to review the list before playing.

Need another reason to come back to Villain-Con? Seasonal skins can be unlocked by visiting Villain-Con Minion Blast each month. Once you’ve unlocked a skin, it’s yours. You can customize your blaster in the lab to take advantage of some of these extra features.

In “The Lab,” you can customize your blaster’s features with skins and perks. One of the first things we would recommend is tapping the “perks” icon on the top right corner of the blaster diagram.

Perks are unlocked by leveling up and can be used to modify your blaster, making it more powerful. For example, we unlocked the Force Multiburst perk at Level 1, which creates a multiburst of the force ammunition. You can unlock new perks as you level up.

If you tap your score at the top right corner on the home screen, you can see how many more points you need to reach the next level.

There are also different mission you can accept. We took on this mission to blast 12 shiny Vicious 6 medallions in a single round. With each mission you complete, a new mission unlocks.

You may notice some bugs are not quite worked out in the app. Some letters appear boxy and gray, but the attraction is still in technical rehearsals. We had no problems syncing the blaster to the app, though.

When you pick up your blaster in the Villain-Con Minion Blast queue, open up the app and choose “Sync Blaster” on the home page. The “ready to scan” screen will pop up next. Simply tap your phone to the blaster, near the display screen, and the screen with turn green with a message that says you have successfully paired the blaster and app. Next, your name will appear on the blaster as well as the color and icon for the ride.

At the end of the attraction, you can see your score on the blaster and in the app. If you make it into Today’s Top 30 Villains, your name and points will appear on the scoreboard in the Evil Stuff gift shop. You can see UniNews Annie ranked #15 on the board.

Villain-Con Minion Blast and Minion Land will officially open on August 11, 2023. There will be Annual Passholder previews in early August. As technical rehearsals continue, app syncing may not always be available.

There is a possibility of seeing more of these types of “Universal Play” activities in the future. Earlier this year, Universal selected a small group of Annual Passholders to participate in a testing experience collecting points with an AR viewer in the Universal Orlando app. We think there could be even more interactive features tested in the parks ahead of Epic Universe opening. Super Nintendo World features connected gameplay, too, with Power-Up Bands and the Universal Studios Hollywood app.

What do you think of the addition of the new connected gameplay features for Illumination’s Villain-Con Minion Blast? Are you excited to check out some of the missions and compete against your friends and family? Let us know if you think you can make the daily top 30 and stay tuned for more updates.

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