Owner, Senior Editor
Michael is a Director of Cultural Intelligence at Simon & Schuster, and previously worked in Strategy & Analytics at Digitas Health. He previously served as an adjunct professor at Villanova University, on the editorial board for the Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine, as a senior editor of the Journal of Law, Technology & the Internet, and has published a number of articles exploring the intersection between business, communications, and the law.
After serving as a staff writer at ARGNet for three years, Michael took over as owner and senior editor in 2009.
PostCurious’ newest narrative puzzletale Emerald Echoes, on Kickstarter through August 2025
PostCurious has a new narrative puzzle adventure called Emerald Echoescrowdfunding on Kickstarter, with the campaign running through August 14th. In many ways, it’s a classic PostCurious game: a series of moderately difficult puzzles strung together to tell a heartfelt story, drawing upon thoughtfully constructed game components designed to draw you into the narrative.
But the reason I’m currently obsessed with Emerald Echoes is how the game reinvents PostCurious’ already strong hint systems, taking the game fully offline in a surprisingly satisfying manner.
Three of the four chapters from Emerald Echoes, delivered in narratively relevant envelopes
Emerald Echoes Finds Puzzlers Returning to the World of The Emerald Flame Emerald Echoes is framed as a sequel to one of PostCurious’ earliest games, The Emerald Flame. The first game in the series followed Marketa’s research into an alchemical elixir and the often strained relationship that blossomed with Hannah, as told from the player’s perspective as a Koschei Historical Society researcher poring over letters and artifacts from the time in the modern day.
Emerald Echoes picks up where Emerald Flame left off, as people who have come to care for Marketa try and retrace her steps and find her after the events of the first game: a story that is once more told through the perspective of researchers investigating archaeological findings.
Notably, this is a standalone sequel: I played this with a friend who had never played the first installment, and the story still made sense without context from Hannah and Marketa’s prior adventures, although there are the occasional light nods to prior events.
The Paradox Bar: Doors of Divergence’s in-universe lobby (that also doubles as a functioning bar)
On my first visit to the Paradox Bar I received a free drink ticket from myself, welcoming me back to the timeless venue. A handful of colorful characters slipped out of time, and found themselves at an old bar from the 1950’s. As another version of me explained in a letter, “it’s kind of a watering hole for those of us trying to repair reality – a place to meet, talk about our efforts, and compare notes while we try to find the right set of choices that will fix this rift once and for all.”
A free drink ticket, from myself – not your typical pub experience
The Paradox Bar acts as in-universe lobby for a trilogy of escape rooms collectively referred to as The Paradox Cycle, although players often referred to the games by the company’s name: Doors of Divergence. The rooms had a relatively short run in New York City: the game’s first chapter, Heresy 1897 opened in June 2022. This was quickly followed by the release of its second chapter, Madness 1917, in September. Just over a year later, Doors of Divergence closed its doors with an in-universe farewell party in October 2023.
During those 16 months, I took seven trips through the rifts at the Paradox Bar, because the team designed an experience that meant every single visit was a completely different one, leading me through different puzzles and even rooms, despite nominally playing the same game multiple times. Luckily, an online alternate reality game seems to be implying that Doors of Divergence has found a new home, giving me an excuse to talk about what remains my favorite escape room due to the depth of its experience and the vaguely terrifying scope of its ambition.
The stage at the Paradox Bar.
Into the Rift: Beyond Choose Your Own Adventure The Doors of Divergence experience starts at the Paradox Bar, where a welcoming bartender introduces teams to the space between times they have fallen into, and introduces a few of the colorful characters who have fallen into the rift with them. One might come across an engineer, an astronaut, or even a scout leader milling about the bar. Idle conversation might even trigger a special request for the pending journey through time: bring back a couple of gears to help fix a clock, perhaps.
My first night, the Paradox Bar even had some special programming planned, and the surprisingly spacious room’s stage was used for a variety show, complete with aerialist performance. Once it’s your group’s time to proceed into the rift, a member of the staff would pull you and your group to the side, and introduce the mission. But instead of dryly reading off a list of rules and regulations, players would be encouraged to pull a series of tarot cards, offering divinations of events to come (and the corresponding rules to help navigate those situations).
As players’ first interaction with the Rift, Heresy 1897 leads players into the past as they enter Edmond Cavanaugh’s study, where they encounter the game’s Proctor. Teams are challenged with a question that determines which of two completely different escape rooms to play, within that space.
One of the puzzles from Heresy 1897, that is only seen by half the teams navigating the escape room
That means that Heresy 1897 is technically two completely different escape rooms, that just so happens to occupy the same space. There’s an entire room of Heresy that is unique to that initial binary choice, and there’s nothing about the in-game experience that would even hint at that secret. Teams are also presented with a moral quandary at the end of every room, meaning Heresy 1897 has four different endings, even if teams complete the room.
To help players track these choices, post-game debriefs include handing out a series of cards to commemorate key decisions and actions from the escape room. Entering those codes into an online portal tracks your progress and choices through the game – not just for those key moments at the beginning and end of the experience, but for some of the smaller choices, rewarding players who push the edges of the experience. Did you get sticky fingers at an opportune time, or linger for a moment longer than you should have?
Madness 1917 is where you start to really see the impact of those choices, with at least four different narrative and puzzle experiences: every escape room team enters an insane asylum during the Great War, but the reason for being there is changed, and interactions with the sequel experience’s two actors starts taking a much more theatrical turn, although it is still an escape room experience at its core.
A new “I Love Bees” mailing, over twenty years after the first one
Twenty-one years ago to the day, ARGNet received a jar of honey in the mail. It came from a relatively new San Francisco based apiary, bearing a relatively simple log for “Margaret’s Honey”. Curiously, there were a series of understandably sticky letters shoved into the jar…unscrambling them spelled out the name of a website. After investigating the site for a while, ARGNet was pretty confident this was the launch of an alternate reality game. So, the ARG was given a name – SPiDeR, after a warning message that appeared on the site: System Peril Distributed Reflex. That name didn’t quite stick (pun intended), with fans preferring to call the game The Haunted Apiary.
Most reading this right now would likely know the game better by the website’s name, scrambled up in that vintage jar of honey…I Love Bees. Yesterday, I received a new package in the mail from the Bay Area…only this time, it wasn’t tied to a rogue AI from the future that hacked a small business’ website. At least, not directly. It was from fans of the game, looking to commemorate a community that just got old enough to drink in the United States, if it were a person. And in that spirit, I’m going to set aside ARGNet’s traditional format and engage in a more personal reflection on I Love Bees and its legacy. Because, unsurprisingly: I still love bees.
The custom-built radio was one of many centerpieces of the MIT Mystery Hunt in 2025
It’s late on a Friday night, and our team of investigators have tracked down a lead while investigating the theft of the Shadow Diamond. We’re instructed to send a core group of aspiring detectives to the gala to try and track down the thief. Once our group assembles at the gala event, a helpful bartender tunes our radio to the proper channel, and set us off on a narrative scavenger hunt that weaved across over a dozen buildings on the MIT campus, tracking down the locations of eleven blue paw prints. The twist: since this was a noir detective adventure, our audio helper only saw things in black and white, so many of the colorful signposts along the way were described in shades of gray – fifty, to be exact.
Eventually, our team realized that the film noir world of MITropolis we traced layered perfectly over a map of the MIT campus itself, and that cross-referencing the clues we discovered along the way paired with the locations of those Blue Clues spelled out the identity of the thief.
A map of Downtown MITropolis, used in conjunction with the results of a real world audio adventure
Armed with a name, our full team went up to the gala to confront the thief…only to discover that the culprit was murdered, and the diamond near the body was a fake, covered in scuff marks. Luckily, we were recognized for our efforts and upgraded to trainee detective status.
The MIT Mystery Hunt Means Something Different Every Year At this point, the MIT Mystery Hunt might be the most covered immersive experience on ARGNet, with articles discussing the hunts in 2011, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022, and 2023. And while the site skipped coverage of the annual event in 2024, that was because I was part of the team running that year’s hunt.
Some things have been constant about the MIT Mystery Hunt over that time. Hundreds of extremely smart puzzlers gather at MIT (either in person or virtually) over MLK Day weekend to push the boundaries of what a puzzle can be – both as puzzle constructors, and as solvers. There’s a narrative tying that experience together, structured around “feeder” puzzles, and meta-puzzles that use the answers of those feeder puzzles as inputs into a broader puzzle challenge. Teams have a long weekend in January to make it through the puzzles. And the reward for finishing the hunt first is a coin-like object, paired with the responsibility for running the next year’s Mystery Hunt.
Beyond that, the Mystery Hunt becomes an aspirational exercise in what the event can be, presented by teams that are excited about the event for very different reasons. And one of the most compelling questions asked by Death & Mayhem with their 2025 Mystery Hunt The Case of the Shadow Diamond was what it means to be a puzzle hunt community, in the first place.
Teaser images from the Office of Admissions at SCXR Academy
SCXR (pronounced “Scar”) is a new fashion brand. Its first line of products are slated to release at the end of May, and in the brand’s announcement video its creator Sugar (also known as Angelina Zhang) described its vision by explaining: “I have a hard time explaining what my dream style is. But if I had to choose a word, it’d be fictional.” And while that comment was intended to reference the brand’s aesthetic inspirations like the fashion featured in Bratz, Monster High, and My Little Pony, the “fictional” inspiration seems to go beyond that, moving into alternate reality gaming territory.
The SCXR website is currently fairly minimal, with retail features grayed out. However, registering for updates triggers an in-universe email from SCXR Academy’s Dean of Admissions Lilith Aranea welcoming new students to the academy with the somewhat ominous welcome message, “we can’t wait to see you on campus…The Academy is always watching“.
SCXR’s main character Scarlet, potentially providing a sneak peek at some of the featured fashion
In the project’s launch video, Zhang explains that the SCXR line takes place within the fictional world of SCXR Academy, and centers around Scarlet as the protagonist in a story that should appeal to fans of stories that touch on coming-of-age stories, dystopic thrillers, and mystery / ARG narratives.
While Zhang is still a University of Toronto student, she also built a massive presence as a Canadian online influencer, with almost 6 million followers on Douyin and TikTok alone. Her content leans towards musical covers with a healthy dose of fashion and cosplay thrown into the mix, although she was also one of the more vocal figures explaining Chinese social media platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu (“RedNote”) to US audiences worried about a potential TikTok ban.
In an interview with Gary Guo that touched on the project in January, Zhang explains, “it’s kind of a unique clothing concept because I have a lot of reoccurring character personas in my videos. I have a red haired girl, I have a black haired girl, and they’re very different. And my clothing brand is going to be something similar to using these characters to reflect their styles, versus using me as Sugar to reflect their styles…it’s going to be a virtual influencer brand.”
And it doesn’t seem like that earlier reference to ARGs is hyperbolic: this virtual influencer brand looks like it has some secrets to uncover.
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.
dropout arg
generation loss
welcome home
subtext game
flip the future
masquerade nyc