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

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 SCP Foundation: Horror Through Paperwork
ARGNet has touched on the subject of the SCP Foundation a few times in the past but this is the first dedicated article on the subject, so here’s a brief introduction to the shared universe for those who are less familiar with the sprawling narrative. In universe, the SCP Foundation is an extra-governmental organization dedicated to the study and cataloging of anomalous entities, with the goal of protecting humanity from nearly countless threats. Because not much is known about these entities, SCP researchers will use Class-D employees (frequently death-row inmates) as disposable test subjects, to determine how the various anomalies function. The results of these studies are kept in a series of numbered logs that dispassionately describe what the Foundation learned about the anomalies under containment.

In practice, that has led to a database of thousands of numbered articles, providing technical documentation around the containment and research into individual anomalies. While each record is typically a standalone narrative in its own right, there are often recurring characters and narrative arcs that reoccur throughout the archives. Through this structure, the SCP Foundation isn’t just about finding horror in the unknown…it’s about exploring the horror of a bureaucracy that treats lives as expendable under the excuse of a noble cause.

Structurally, the SCP Foundation is a collective storytelling project, shared under a Creative Commons license to allow for anyone to contribute to its expansion (including Perplex City co-creator Adrian Hon). The project has been going on for almost twenty years now, with writers introducing new threats and narrative threads into the shared universe, and adapting the narratives into different forms. There is no official canon for the SCP universe, by design: even the Foundation’s origin exists as a number of equally plausible theories, many of which are documented under the SCP-001 record.

There have been novels, short films, video games, and immersive shows, built within the SCP Foundation framework, either directly or indirectly. And now, at least one alternate reality game.

We’ve Already Lost: Gameplay in SCP: Afterworld
SCP: Afterworld launched through a teaser trailer, laying out the bare bones of the story. Notably, within the Afterworld universe, the Foundation has already failed. An SCP escaped containment during transit, and this somehow spiraled into a Total Containment Failure. A stray manila folder in the trailer hides a QR code leading to the SCP: Afterworld website, while a message at the center of a conspiracy corkboard ominously claims, “it began at echonet”.

After logging into the SCP: Afterworld site, players are presented with a dimly lit workbench. Clicking around the space uncovers a handful of clues that can help advance in the mystery, before inserting a data cartridge into the computer and proceeding with the investigation.

The goal of the first mission is to find out what happened to one particular echonet shipment that went missing by virtually hacking into employee intranet accounts and piecing together clues left by a particularly unlucky driver. While the puzzle trail is both fair and well crafted, the steps aren’t always explicitly spelled out so players may find themselves engaging in a little deductive reasoning to reach the story’s conclusion.

While the narrative is largely text-based and centered around the echonet databases, there are still a handful of audio files and images to sift through as part of the puzzling experience, and “ARG skills” will be helpful here beyond socially engineering your way into login credentials. Importantly, the gameplay fits with what you’d want to see out of the SCP Foundation: poring through dry, dispassionate documents to learn more about untold horrors of the supernatural and all-too-human kind.

For those interested in digging a little deeper, there are a few easter eggs and purely optional narrative beats that can be discovered by playing around with the site a little more, with many of those discoveries tied to an in-game achievement system. The game’s social activity feed also provides some helpful tidbits, with interactions from players complemented by activity from a series of NPCs – some of these hint at how to advance in the game (how does one befriend echobot, and how are people discovering pizza orders), while some are just plain fun (the NPC_Chef’s “mystery meat” sounds more than a little ominous).

Those who are familiar with the broader SCP Foundation may also notice a few references to other numbered SCP anomalies. Many of those cameos are already referenced on the game’s FAQ page.

Currently, SCP: Afterworld only has a single chapter released. However, if you’re curious about what the Those Beyond gameplay experience is like, their experiences for the Walking Dead and Invincible franchises are further along, with additional stories centered around War of the Worlds and Dracula in development.

The game is relatively accessible to newer puzzle game fans, with difficulty levels more in line with escape rooms than most ARGs, which often assume hundreds of players are collaborating together. So, SCP: Afterworld might make for a useful introduction for players new to the space – particularly if you’re already a fan of the SCP Foundation. You can find this and future chapters at scp.thosebeyond.io.

Thanks to site-42 for bringing attention to the game through a livestreamed playthrough of the first chapter. In addition to being an in-universe researcher in his own right, Dr Theron Sherman does an incredible job of documenting the many SCP fan projects, including the immersive theater productions mentioned earlier in this article.