Zombie Games Café & Bar

A retro gaming bar in Cricklewood where the ground floor has consoles and board games and the basement has a DJ booth and a dance floor. Zombie Games Café & Bar runs on a simple idea — two completely different atmospheres stacked on top of each other — and executes it with enough pop culture personality that the venue has built a loyal following since opening.

Owner Paddy's roots in the Sparta Card Gaming community show in the details. This isn't a bar that stuck a few arcade machines in the corner and called itself a gaming venue. The upstairs is genuinely stocked with retro consoles, board games, trading card setups, and pop culture memorabilia, while the downstairs transforms into a neon-lit club space with a proper dance floor, disco ball, and full sound system.

Two Floors, Two Personalities

The upstairs Retro Bar & Café is the daytime and early-evening space — casual, social, built around gaming as a shared activity rather than solitary entertainment. Graffiti-style artwork and pop culture memorabilia give the room a visual density that rewards a slow look around.

The Upside Down — the basement — is named with appropriate drama. Neon lighting, a dedicated DJ booth, a dance floor, and a PA system that can handle a proper party. The transition from upstairs to downstairs mirrors the way the best events build: start social, end spectacular.

Not Your Usual Hire

Zombie Games sits outside the usual London venue categories, which is exactly its appeal for certain events. Corporate teams looking for something that actually gets people talking to each other. Birthday parties where the venue is the entertainment. Gaming community events with a bar attached. Brand activations for companies whose audience overlaps with pop culture and gaming.

The late licence, in-house bar, and flexible space — with individual floor hire available alongside full venue buyouts — mean the venue adapts to what you need rather than forcing a format. The Cricklewood Broadway address, a short hop from Kilburn on the Jubilee line, places it just far enough from central London to feel like a discovery without being genuinely hard to reach.