ARG Features
The puzzle cards are intended as an introduction to the characters and story of Perplex City itself, and the deeper mysteries of the Cube theft. Clues found on the cards direct players to various websites, blogs, emails, phone calls, and SMS messages, originating from Perplex City. These often feature puzzles of their own, whose solutions lead to further puzzles. Frequently these puzzles require players to co-operate in reaching various goals.
Perplex City has been running since late 2004, much longer than the traditional ARG. Its longevity has allowed for a number of events that simply would not be possible within a two-month traditional lifespan of an ARG. Some examples of this include:
- Players wrote a book to enable a character to become a "published author" and gain access to relevant archives.
- A full length CD of cryptic techno music was released by a Perplexian musician.
- A banner plane flew across Manchester with a keyword that enabled access to a new area of the game.
- Sixty players attended an in-game event in search for clues, only for one of their own to be revealed as a mole and escape in a black helicopter.
- 220 people participated in the first Perplex City Academy Games in London, a high-tech scavenger hunt across the capital. A month later, a similar event was held in New York.
Read more about this topic: Perplex City
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)