arg_alert.jpgDeus City, a new, promising ARG is scheduled to hit the internets in the spring of 2007, and ARGN has been fortunate enough to have learned a couple of things about the project.

Deus City is a student-run project from the guys and gals at University of Texas – Dallas, in cooperation with Fundi Technologies of Dallas. The plot will revolve around communication with a community, Deus City, located in the future. The gameplay is currently framed around puzzles and that unlike the current hit, Perplex City, the puzzles will primarily reside online. On the more ambitious side of the project, the game is planned to have features such as dynamic point structures based upon the players’ ability to solve the puzzles correctly with the fewest number of guesses. There are also hints to a “virtual future economy” structure that could also lead to some interesting gameplay. Also intriguing is the idea that the game will attempt to integrate morality into the gameplay structure, as to give at least two different paths a player can run through the game, with moral and ethical implications as a result of the decisions made in the game. Hand in hand with this idea, is a karmic statistic system that, while not fully disclosed at this time, is intriguing to say the least, and could be just one more element in the building of a groundbreaking Alternate Reality Game. To quote the head developer of the team working on Deus City, “We feel that contact with our future selves is imminent and that the world that awaits us will be much more than it seems at first contact.”


If that feeling can be captured well through immersive gameplay, then surely this game will be played and loved by many. It’s a great ideal, and the potential for genre-rocking innovative gameplay is there. However, while any ARG enthusiast would definitely welcome any promising new game, it remains to be seen whether this game will configure itself in a way as to shrug off the obvious correlation in structure to Perplex City, with its familiar-yet-foreign world, puzzle-based structure, and point ranking systems. However, the Deus City project is already in full development, and hopefully more news will come our (and your) way giving us more insight as to what we can expect from this game.

While spring of 2007 is a while away, there is something you can do now, to get yourself plugged into Deus City even now: The developers will accept guest puzzles. To learn more about how to submit a puzzle and the API format required for submission, you can contact Adam Brackin, and he’ll get you all the details.

In the meantime, while you check out the Deus City parking site or the Deus City blog to which it links, we here at ARGN are looking forward to another good experience (after the acclaimed, student-created ARG, “Ares Station“), and wait with great anticipation for what looks to be a fun, and interesting game. Will it live up to its ambitious goals, or will it turn out to be a Perplex City clone? Only time will tell, but ARGN will be here, to keep you up to date with any new developments and news as it relates to Deus City.