Review Perplex City Developer: Mind Candy Publisher: N/A Genre: Alternate Reality Game Release Date: April 2005 Platform: Any Web Browser w/ Email Review by Robert Washburne May 10, 2006		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Perplex City is an ARG (Alternate Reality Game). What is an ARG?

It is the latest form of computer gaming.

The is the next step in the evolution of Adventure games.

It is what Adventure games have been all along.

Ever since Crowther and Woods allowed us to type, “go west” and the computer responded, “You are in front of a small building - a well house for a small spring.” people have been attempting to create alternate realities in their computers. But up until now there has been a very strict separation between the world inside the computer and the world outside.

ARGs are the first significant attempt to bring the fantasy world inside of the computer outside into the real world. Oh, some games have dipped their toes into reality. Missing Since January required the player to surf the web for research and clues and it sent emails from “partners” at appropriate times. These were nice touches, but the game itself was still firmly attached to the computer's graphics card and sound chip.

An ARG exists out here and the computer is used only as infrastructure to bring the players together.

But isn't that just an RPG like Dungeons and Dragons?

No. There is no role playing in an ARG. An RPG requires that you pretend that you are someone or something else (at least I hope you are only pretending to be a level 20 dwarf...) and then to pretend that you are somewhere off in a fantasy world. An ARG requires that you be you. It takes place right where you are right now. And just like reality, it will follow you where ever you go.

And no, it is not a Star Trek convention (or, even worse, Furry) where socially dysfunctional people dress up in weird costumes and pretend to be something they are not in a world which isn't as mean. Again, you are you. ARG players may get together off line as well as on line to discuss how the game is going, but it is no different than getting together with any other friend to discuss how the softball game went yesterday. The intent is not to create fantasy, but an alternate reality.

So, just what is an ARG? Well, let me create a simple one right off the top of my head...

-) You get an email (a real email. This is not a computer game.) from someone named Joe. Joe says that a mutual friend gave him your email address and said that you might be able to help him. You see, Joe works in a large pet store and somehow their expensive tropical fish have been vanishing. The owners would hate to confront any of the employees without any evidence. After all, the fish could just be eating each other. But he includes a URL to the pet store's web site and asks you to check it out.

-) You check out the web site. It's a nice store. You notice that it does have a security system and a web cam pointed at the ferret cage.

-) You send an email back to Joe asking about the security system and suggesting that web cam be turned to look at the fish tanks.

-) Joe emails back and confirms that the alarms have been set, but did not go off. So if it is a thief, then they have the key and know how to disable the system. Joe also takes your suggestion and secretly re-aims the web cam.

-) A couple of days pass and Joe sends you another email with an attachment. The web cam picked up something, but only a shadow and fish were missing the next day. You notice something distinct about the shadow and ask Joe if there is anyone who works at the store who wears a mullet.

-) Joe responds that he doesn't know, but here is the URL to the employees page.

And on it goes.

What distinguishes a game of this sort is that it might be real. If Joe and the Pet Store really existed, would things have happened any differently?

The other thing to distinguish an ARG is that it can only be played once in real-time (Reality does not repeat. Neither does it have a Save Game feature). So it needs to be played with as many people as possible. This allows for puzzles which are much too difficult for any individual, but are perfectly solvable for the Hive Mind. Think you would have come up with the idea to use the web cam as a security camera? Well, if you didn't, someone else surely would have and the game would have moved on. Of course, the game should be quite long so that new people can join in at any time.

Perplex City is an ARG.

The Beginning

Perplex City is a civilization and technology slightly more advanced than ours which exists on another planet. They have the ability to tap into our communications system, but not to travel here. At least they didn't think they had...

The culture of Perplex City is fascinated by (obsessed with?) puzzles. They use them everywhere and are considered high art.

Early last year their most prized artifact, The Receda Cube, was stolen from the Academy Museum. The thieves somehow managed to transport the Cube to Earth and hide it somewhere. Their motives are as mysterious as their identities.

Since the Perplex City authorities don't know how to travel out here to look for the Cube, they have decided to open the lines of communication and enlist our help in locating it.

Two Games in One

Perplex City is actually two games; a treasure hunt and a detective mystery. You can play either one or the other or both. There is no interdependency between them. The one costs money to play, but offers a cash prize to the winner. The other is completely free.

The Treasure Hunt

The Perplexians need our help, but they aren't too sure about our ability to solve puzzles or our IQs in general. So they decided to send us everything they knew about the case in the form of Puzzle Cards. These Cards would not only provide insight into the Perplexian mind, but would also help exercise our lazy brains There are a total of 256 cards and they are being released in four waves. The last wave is due to be released in June of 2006.

Each card has at least one puzzle on it. Many cards have additional clues or parts of puzzles which must be combined with other cards. Some cards have URLs on them. You are expected to search them. Some cards have phone numbers. You are expected to call them. The layering can get quite deep.

Each card has a silver scratch-off area which hides its unique ID number. Once you solve the main puzzle of the card, you can log on to the Perplex City web site with your free account and enter your solution. Once the system acknowledges that you have the correct answer and that no one else has used that card, it will credit you with the number of points indicated on the card. A Leader Board is kept on line so you can see your standing at any time.

Some cards have “easy” puzzles and are quite common. Other cards are more difficult and are relatively rare. The cards are sold in packs of six for $5 US. They can be purchased on line or through several different chains of stores. There is also a card trading forum where players can buy and trade cards with each other. If you were to buy four packs of cards, you would have about the same number of puzzles or more than you would get from a $20 adventure game. So the cost is quite reasonable.

Once you have solved all of the puzzles on all of the cards, you will have all the clues you need to find the Cube. The Cube really does exist somewhere and the first person to find it will win a prize of $200,000 US or the equivalent in their local currency.

But right now, that seems like a long way off. Everyone is still quite open about the solutions to the cards and acting together as a team. Mostly, they are seen as a way of supporting the game and a source of good karma.

The Detective Mystery.

This is where the Alternate Reality Game kicks in. The Perplexians have opened the lines of communication and we now have access to their Internet. We can read their weekly newspaper, The Sentinel, on its web site. We can read about the Academy on its site as well. There are personal web sites. There are blogs. There is email. And things are changing and updating constantly.

It is here that the community comes together to try and solve the mystery of who stole the Cube, why and how. Much has been learned so far, but there is even more to go.

This is how the game started:

Around April of 2005, an article was posted in The Sentinel which told of their lead investigative reporter having fallen into a mysterious coma. He had been investigating the Cube robbery when he just collapsed. He did come out of the come for a while, but instead of spending his remaining time with his wife, he spent it maniacally working on his computer. He then lapsed back into the coma and died three hours later.

The Reporter's last effort appeared to have been a program of some sort, but nobody knew what it was for. So the family posted it on their home web site as part of their tribute to the reporter. Upon reading this, thousands of players downloaded the program and found... that it didn't run under Microsoft Windows.

Eventually, someone in the community found that the program would run on an Apple Powerbook. But all it did was display a large checkerboard pattern with a marble on it. No amount of typing or mousing would do anything. Until someone picked up their Powerbook and tipped it. And the marble rolled downhill.

It turns out that Apple Powerbooks have built in accelerometers which are used to sense if the device is falling so that the hard drive can park its heads and prevent damage to the disk. The reporter had used this feature to sense how the Powerbook was being tipped and then to cause the marble to roll that way. Freaky if you aren't expecting it.

The next thing which was noticed was that there were invisible walls all over the surface. The checkerboard was actually a maze which you had to guide the marble through by tilting your Powerbook. Soon players all over the planet were trying to find Powerbooks to borrow. They found that once you got the marble through the maze, you were rewarded with a short phrase (like “I have dreamed a dream.”). And another maze.

Once all the mazes were complete, the phrases became a paragraph which sort of implied that the reporter was speaking with someone who might be dangerous. No kidding. But that was it. Nothing else came out of the program.

You and I might have given up there, but when there are thousands of people worrying at the same puzzle something is going to give. One person noticed that on each maze there was a small area which the marble would never get into. So they stacked the mazes into a block and found that the walled off areas formed a perfect number three. Hmmm, can't be coincidence.

Then someone else finally figured out that each of the phrases were actually the names of hidden files on the reporter's web page. You could actually point your browser to ihavedreamedadream.htm and it would display something. What these files displayed were the archives of email conversations the reporter had had with a mysterious person known as The Adviser.

The Adviser claimed that she was one of a team of five people who stole the cube. Most of the email was worthless, but with thousands of people combing through it something was sure to be discovered. There were tiny clues which allowed people to identify the apartment building she lived it. And then to identify which floor. Then a back door was discovered to the security system which showed the thermal traces of people as they moved around the building. The emails were searched again for clues of when The Adviser was in ans out of her room and these were carefully compared to the thermal traces until the very room could be identified.

And so it goes. At the time of this writing, two of the conspirators have been identified, and both of them are dead. A promising candidate for the organization behind the theft has been proposed, but little else has been found so far. But even this far, the full account of what has happened makes a great read.

The bottom line is that there is still lots of game to play and lots for the new player to contribute. There are websites to search, emails to be written and phone numbers to call. And sometimes there are live people on the other side.

Blue and Red Pills

You probably have noticed by now that I have not included any screen shots. The question I keep asking myself is, “Screen shots of what?” This game is free and takes place on the Internet, not within your computer. So for all of the effort of clicking on the screen capture of a web page, you might as well just go there.

So rather than screen shots, here are some links to go to where you can jump right into the game. Think of it as taking the Red Pill.

The place to start is right here. Just follow the links to “The Story So Far.” http://www.perplexcity.com

An excellent independent description of the game can be found here (with lots of good links) http://www.fneh.net/guy/arg/pxcity.htm

Here are a couple of free cards to try out. http://www.perplexcity.com/promo/1/index.qbuild

A complete catalog of everything known about the cards can be found here. http://www.perplexcitycardcatalog.com/

And finally, if you would like to learn more about ARGs, check out the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

And in Conclusion

The people behind Perplex City spent two and a half years working on it. There are currently over 26,000 registered players playing it. There are puzzles for the individual via the cards and there are puzzles for the Hive Mind via the on-line real-time experience.

This is my first experience with ARGs, so I cannot say how innovative Perplex City is. But as a game critic I can tell you that the effort is spot on. It has been done right.

I am giving Perplex City an “A”, not because it deserves a place on your shelf – it won't be around five years from now – but because you need to be playing it. NOW!

Final Grade: A
(find out more about our grading system)

System Requirements:

• Huh? If you can read this article, then your computer can play this game. So get moving! There is a Cube to be found.