ARGNet: Alternate Reality Gaming Network

I Think There Might Be an Official Phantom of the Opera ARG

April 24, 2025 / Michael Andersen / 0 Comments

The unassuming building that will soon serve as home for Masquerade NYC

If you took a trip out to the corner of 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan today, you’d probably walk past without looking twice. The former home of Lee’s Art Shop still bears its prior signage despite closing down in 2016, and the windows are papered over with old newspapers. But on the off chance you did stop to peer at the articles obscuring the view through the building’s large glass windows, you might notice that a couple of those newspapers aren’t just old, they’re practically ancient – dating back to Paris in the 1880s.

This starts to make sense once you realize that Lee’s Art Shop is in the process of transforming into the Paris Opera House, to play host to the upcoming immersive production of Phantom of the Opera, Masquerade NYC. And enough curious events are happening, that I’m beginning to suspect they’re running an alternate reality game to welcome the show into the world.

Act I: Letters from the Opera Ghost
Rumors have been circulating across Broadway for the past few months that Phantom of the Opera would be returning to New York City in the form of an immersive show of some sort. But last year, those rumors started solidifying into something real when Broadway World flagged the casting notice for “UNTITLED IMMERSIVE MUSICAL ATTRACTION”, posted by POTO LLC.

Those rumors further solidified when ardent fans tracked down documents filed with New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Committee outlining the team’s plans to respect the building’s 130 year history as they transform it into a 140 year old Parisian theater. And starting in late 2024 a minimalist version of the MasqueradeNYC.com website went live, asking devoted fans to register for updates – what their Instagram account would later take to referring to as “submitting to the Ledger”.

An early version of the now-red signup page at MasqueradeNYC.com

In March, people who signed up for the list received an email from the Opera Ghost containing a red letter, and a link to the MasqueradeNYC Instagram account reading:

Fondest Greetings.

You submitted your name to my ledger, and for that you shall be among the first to glimpse the strange new world beyond the mirror.

Though the veil is drawn,
the stage is being set
and the Masquerade will soon begin.
Your Host

A month later, fan and Phantom-inspired romance author Jessica Mason received a physical letter from the Opera Ghost in the mail. She had previously made a TikTok video about the virtual letter, but its physical counterpart was significantly more personal. It wasn’t written to a generic Phantom fan. It was written with her in mind.

Dearest Jessica,

Your keen attention to my Masquerade has not gone unnoticed. The devotion you pour into your tales of the Opera Ghost makes you no stranger to the shadows – and soon, you will be able to step into them yourself.

A Masquerade awaits – when the moment comes, be prepared to cross the veil from fiction into reality. Until then, let your pen wander freely.

Your obedient servant,
O.G.

Over the next few days, a host of these deeply personalized letters from the Phantom started going out to other Phantom, Broadway, and immersive theater fans.

The SFX makeup artist @Ash.Paints.Faces received a note saying, “I have seen your artistry – how you wield paint like a mask, transforming faces into visions both haunting and divine. Such talent does not go unnoticed, least of all by one who knows the power of a well-crafted illusion.” Museum of Broadway brand ambassador Malcolm Hollis’ letter reads, “a theater aficionado like you knows the magic isn’t just in the spotlight – it’s in the shadows too. How eager you seem to be to unveil the details of my Masquerade. Where would be the fun in that?” Letter after letter from the Opera Ghost, wooing individual patrons with flattery and kind words. Like he knows them. Like he sees them. Like he hears them.

The Devil is in the Paperwork: The SCP Foundation Has a New ARG

February 18, 2025 / Michael Andersen / 0 Comments

SCP: Afterworld gameplay, through an echonet computer terminal at the end of the world

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I’m sitting in front of an antiquated computer trying to pull up shipping records from a logistics company hoping it might explain how things turned pear-shaped. How did a single missing delivery turn into the apocalypse…and are there any clues to give the survivors a sliver of hope for surviving another day?

SCP: Afterworld is a browser-based alternate reality game created by Those Beyond that starts its tale after a Total Containment Failure at the SCP Foundation. Episodic chapters allow players to piece together what went wrong with the world. For the first chapter, gameplay which focuses around exploring the intranet of echonet, a logistics company that specializes in the “ultra secure transport for high risk samples + specimens”, told through a point and click interface.

The difficulty level is scaled to make this accessible for players approaching the game as a single-player experience in a way that feels reminiscent of Alice & Smith’s The Black Watchmen ARG, although built-in chat features do allow for more collaborative playthroughs.

The Flipbook Creator With a Hidden ARG

December 30, 2024 / Michael Andersen

Future Andy, sending a cryptic message from the year 2059

Andy Bailey is a stop-motion animator who worked on films like ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, Wendell & Wild, and the most recent Chicken Run movie. When he’s not working on feature films, however, he runs the YouTube channel Andymation, which celebrates animated flipbooks as a creative medium. Over the years he’s created a series of flipbooks using invisible ink, created microscopic flipbooks, dove into the history of some of the oldest flipbooks, and even holds an annual flipbook festival. He’s also spent the last few years slowly injecting a narrative about his future self into his videos…and whatever has been going on, seems to be escalating.

Future Andy Emerges, With Really Cool Sunglasses
It all seems to have started in 2019, when Andy made a flipbook of a flux capacitor which caused him to time travel to the 90s, allowing him to reflect on how he fell in love with stop motion animation as a kid. After returning to the present, he brought back a pair of sunglasses and portable FM radio headphones. Later that year, Future Andy came back in that same iconic outfit to celebrate Andymation crossing the 1 million subscriber milestone.

Beard hair powered time travel, with Present and Future Andys. Robin is part of it too, somehow.

Every now and then, Future Andy would return to visit the Andymation channel. In 2021, Future Andy traveled back in time using a beard hair-powered flux capacitor to warn present Andy to enforce strict guidelines for Flipbook Fest 2022, or risk injuring his thumb. He’d also make a return for the Flipbook Fest 2024 announcement, although this time he was explicitly there to observe (and open a pack or two of Garbage Pail Kids cards).

The Ministry of Lost Things Takes PostCurious in an Episodic Direction

October 16, 2024 / Michael Andersen

I have a confession to make: I misplace things all the time. That copy of Ship of Theseus I bought that I was saving for a rainy day? Gone. The transparent lock I used for lockpicking practice? Haven’t seen it in years. My Flynn Lives pin, from the Tron Legacy ARG? Fell off my lanyard at last year’s New York Comic Con, never to be seen again. Many of those lost items are easily replaceable: I still don’t know what happened to my original copy of Ship of Theseus, but I currently have a new copy on my shelf. But some items have enough sentimental value that they can’t be replaced…and that’s where the Ministry of Lost Things comes in.

PostCurious’ newest narrative puzzle game, The Ministry of Lost Things, introduces its players to a world where many of the world’s forgotten or misplaced items make their way to the Elusiverse. Most of these items that disappear from our world are easily forgotten, leading to regions of the Elusiverse overflowing with everything from unwanted receipts to abandoned umbrellas. But sometimes, an item charged with sentimental value goes missing. And it’s up to the Ministry’s Department of Returns to bring those items home.

The Ministry of Lost Things: Lint Condition is positioned as the first in a series of games exploring the Elusiverse, and tasks players with locating one particular item with deep sentimental value attached to it, and returning it to our world. The adventure unfolds across a series of four puzzle packets. Solving a series of puzzles will help narrow down where in the Elusiverse the object can be found, why it meant so much to its previous owner, and where to return it.

A Murder Mystery, Hidden Within the Silent Hill Historical Society?

September 24, 2024 / Michael Andersen

The Silent Hill Historical Society is a small organization dedicated to preserving the small town’s rich history. Which makes their decision to set up shop on the grounds of a prison whose inmates were wiped out by disease a little questionable. Still…lakefront property doesn’t come cheap, so the lapse in judgment can be forgiven. Covering up the murder of a former colleague? Slightly less forgivable.

The Silent Hill Historical Society is an alternate reality game connected to the Silent Hill franchise, created by Konami the team at Daiyonkyokai (“The Fourth Boundary”), the Japanese collective of ARG creators previously behind Project:;COLD. And while Project:;COLD is only available in Japanese, The Silent Hill Historical Society is structured to allow gameplay in English or Japanese, by selecting the preferred language in the upper right corner of the website.

A Deceptively Simple Structure, Obscuring Surprising Depth
On the surface, interactivity with the website is limited: the site’s “Contact” page is down, and the only thing visitors can do is take the Ultimate Silent Hill Quiz: a series of 10 questions that can be answered by closely reading the website, paired with a little research into the Silent Hill games themselves. Fans capable of acing that test are encouraged to tackle the advanced level, an additional 20 questions that go even deeper into the Historical Society’s archives.

Curiously, while the staff pages feature six employees at the Silent Hill Historical Society, staff posts reference a seventh employee, erased from the site. That former employee’s story is told through a series of 36 hidden pages, scattered throughout the website. Some of those links are clickable links that can be found by closely investigating each page of the website, while others require a bit more creativity, finding the right keywords and entering them into the website’s URL, after the domain name.

Gravity Falls and a Decade Long Education in (Bill) Ciphering

August 16, 2024 / Michael Andersen

Image from ThisIsNotAWebsiteDotCom.com, by Eduardo Valdés-Hevia

Starting in 2012, Disney started airing a new animated series called Gravity Falls following the adventures of twins Dipper and Mabel Pines as the twins spent the summer at their “Grunkle” Stan’s roadside attraction The Mystery Shack, nestled in a small town in Oregon. And while the show was targeted towards kids, the show also presented an increasingly complex series of mysteries for its audience to solve along, introducing a new generation to the world of alternate reality games through everything from cryptic messages hidden in the show itself to a global scavenger hunt.

The series’ primary antagonist, Bill Cipher, only appeared in a fraction of the series’ episodes…but the sentient triangle was at the epicenter of the show’s mysteries and many of its puzzles, with many of the puzzles of the last decade revolving around the question: “what happened to Bill, after his dramatic confrontation with the Pines family in the series finale?” Almost a decade later, The Book of Bill offers answers to that question with an epistolary look into Bill’s past, present, and future in a book packed to the brim with puzzles and ciphers to decode. The book also brought with it an alternate reality game that helps provide context and closure to the series.

The hidden title card from the show’s opening

“Solving” Gravity Falls, During the Show’s Initial Run
At the tail end of the opening credits to Gravity Falls an aged page from a journal is shown, prominently featuring a one-eyed triangle that fans took to calling “Triangle Guy”. Before cutting to commercials, a voice whispered the only words in the now iconic theme song: “three letters back”. Applying that shift cipher to the message on the screen, “VWDQ LV QRW ZKDW KH VHHPV”, delivered the first of many messages from the show: “Stan is not what he seems”. The cipher also came in handy during the episode’s end credits. During an extended scene featuring a rainbow-puking gnome, a message in that same cipher greeted viewers with a hearty “Welcome to Gravity Falls”.

This pattern followed for every episode of the series: reversed audio messages in the opening credits might provide a hint at how to solve the episode’s cipher, and a secret message was inserted into the end credits, for those who cared to look. After a few episodes, the messages switched over to the Atbash cipher – but to make sure viewers were prepared, the prior episode’s secret message informed viewers, “Mr. Caesarian will be out next week. Mr Atbash will substitute.” To further reinforce that message, the opening theme song’s reversed audio was swapped out to say, “switch A and Z”. Over the course of the series, these ciphers grew increasingly complex, and viewers were introduced to A1Z26 ciphers, the Vigenère cipher, indexing, and even multiple custom cipher languages with in-universe origins.

A Rumble’s Revenge easter egg, spelling out “thEre are six hints i will give you”

Every now and then, the solving went beyond the bounds of the show itself. Part of the way through the first season, Disney released a Flash game called Rumble’s Revenge, putting fans into the role of Dipper and Mabel as they fought through cryptids the characters encountered. Interacting with 12 objects throughout the game pulled up messages from the Triangle Guy that, when decoded, revealed his name before he officially appeared in the show: “MY NAME IS BILL”.

This interplay between puzzle and theory continued as the show progressed, culminating in a puzzle-laden cliffhanger. During Stan Pines’ final confrontation with Bill Cipher, Bill’s final words are spoken through reversed audio: “A-X-O-L-O-T-L, my time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may return!” So, in a show when almost everything else wrapped up neatly, the question remains: what happened to Bill?