Interactive floor and amusement systems and methods employing same

An amusement system comprising:

• an interactive floor system comprising:
• an array of panels laid out in one or more grids with the panels of each grid lying at generally equal elevation in generally coplanar relation to one another to collectively define respective areas of an interactive floor surface;
• an illumination system operable to individually illuminate each panel of the array independently of any other panel of the array;
• and
• a sensing system operable to detect presence of any participant atop any panel of the array, independently of whether presence of a participant is detected on any other panel in the array;
• a controller connected to the illumination and sensing systems and configured to send illumination command signals to the illumination system to change illuminated statuses of the panels of the array, and to receive detection signals from the sensing system denoting detected presence of participants on the panels of the array;
• wherein the controller is configured to execute a gameplay sequence, and to execute the following steps therein:
• designate a subset of the panels as hazard panels to be avoided by participants;
• trigger illumination of the hazard panels by the illumination system in a manner distinguishable from all other panels of the array;
• monitor for detected participant presence on any of the hazard panels;
• and
• in response to detected participant presence on any hazard panel, perform at least one of (a) execution of a penalty step in said gameplay sequence, and (b) termination said gameplay sequence.