Category: Update (Page 28 of 41)

Stranger Adventures or Waiting Game?

August 21, 2006 / Nicko Demeter

“We want to let everyone know that we will release Daily Rage! very soon. Although we can not supply a specific start date…”

And so came and went another update from Tech Support at Stranger Adventures, an ARG that uses Flash technology to grant the user access to an interface in which they can gather clues, watch videos of the updates, and help solve the case.

After three runs on plots that spanned the period of days, Stranger Adventures announced that it will be creating the Daily Rage, an interactive self-concluding daily ARG. While the player base remained sceptical, the developers announced that the cash rewards (yes, winners there get real money) will continue with the Daily Rage and will be awarded to the winners, well, daily.

However, the already ambitious project seems like it has been placed on an indefinite hold. The SA fans, loyal to the core, proclaim that they will remain steadfast until the release of Daily Rage, yet plenty of them have already signed off. The updates from SA, while filled with ambiguity, hint that the release date is not far. We will remain on the case, as it were, and let you know when you can go visit and get your dose of Daily Rage.

Studio Cypher: Perfect Friends Forever

August 18, 2006 / Michelle Senderhauf

Studio Cypher’s second case, Perfect Friends Forever, concluded last month and players finally discovered who was trying to kill Madame Z, the psychic founder of the Perfect Friends Forever website.

Perfect Friends Forever is a friend matching service where six ghostly spiritual advisors examine and compare members’ spirits to pair up perfect eternal friends. Madame Z lives with these six spirits in the former residence of the wealthy E.S. Wylie and the most famous house in Bay Horse, MO. Just as the PFF service was about to launch, Madame Z received a grim warning, “Die Z”, written in plates and silverware on the floor of her bedroom. Yes, that’s right. Not only did the psycho madman threaten Z, but he threw grandma’s fine china on the carpet to do it!

Players joined forces with a skeptical gumshoe named Anton Jeffries and solved the case. Or did they? As the perp, an antiques dealer who wanted to find the hidden treasure of E.S. Wylie, was handcuffed and taken away to the big house he yelled out that the treasure was still out there waiting to be found. The Studio Cypher PMs have confirmed that the treasure’s location can be found in E.S. Wylie’s will. So those who are looking for a good unsolved puzzle to defeat, check out the thread about it at UnFiction.

Treasure Hunters: The Hunt Is Almost Complete. Will There Be More?

August 16, 2006 / Nicko Demeter

It started with an all-call at NBC for short audition videos of unique teams of three willing to put themselves on the line using their brains and stamina. From the submissions, NBC picked ten teams that would be emerged into a part-reality show, part-ARG, hunt for treasure. Teams receive directional messages via video and text messages to their cell phones, while driving, flying, sailing, riding, hiking, and climbing their way to the clues and, ultimately, the treasure. The game itself has hints of the movie National Treasure (with the music having a VERY familiar undertone to the movie’s score), and it educates the viewers and the participants in the mysteries surrounding the American Revolution and the initial creation of the United States.

This is the second endeavor of a TV network to place participants in an ARG-like situation, rather than running an ARG parallel to the show as in Push, NV, following Fox’s cancelled Murder in Small Town X. Will this show be more successful? So far they have managed something that seems to be important to current, large-scale ARGs: corporate sponsorship. The fact that companies bought into this plan gives hope that the ARG’s are not only the future of gaming, but the future of entertainment for the masses, be they participant or spectator.

The series comes to an end next week, airing live Monday, August 21 at 9pm on NBC. From the original 10 teams, three remain: Air Force, the Geniuses, and the Southie Boys. Tune in to watch the exciting conclusion of the hunt.

I Left My… Cube? in San Francisco?

August 11, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Another large-scale organized event for Perplex City is taking place tomorrow in San Francisco, California, hot on the heels of the almost-worldwide release of the fourth and final wave of Season One puzzle cards, which took place on July 31st. To help build up the hype machine for this event, the creative forces at Mind Candy Design have teamed up with buy.com and 1UP.com as official partners — there’s even a mini-game and Club at 1UP (http://von.1up.com and http://officialperplexcity-club.1up.com, respectively).

The event coincides with a plot development where the ‘Third Power’ has severed the link between our world and the world in which Perplex City exists, and players can expect this get-together to be a task-oriented affair. According to the Mind Candy Emergency website, “At 11am PDT on Saturday (7pm in the UK), (Mind Candy) be giving an emergency briefing both online at this website and at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco, detailing what needs to be done.” Will the participants save the day and be victorious against the Third Power evil-doers? Probably. In any case, it sounds like a heck of a way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and we encourage those in attendance to write in with your reactions and summaries of the day’s events for a follow-up early next week!

Editor’s Note: We are not suggesting that the Receda Cube will be found in San Francisco. It’s just a funny title, people.

It’s Staring at Me, Mommy! Make the Oculus Stop!

August 3, 2006 / Michelle Senderhauf

The last time we looked in on Ocular Effect there wasn’t much more to report on than a mysterious countdown and possible connection to an ABC Family movie. Since then the countdown has ended and what looks to be an ARG has appeared in its place.

When the countdown ran to zero, an strange coded sphere called the Oculus appeared. When opened, the Oculus now redirects to the website of Miss Vix’s tattoo parlor in Seattle, WA. Miss Vix was lucky enough to stumble upon and hire a young artist named Faith Arella. Faith has become the hottest new thing to hit the Seattle tattoo scene with her own style of tattoos which seem to give their recipients good fortune.

The all knowing Oculus also reveals a school for gifted children called the Bethlehem Conservatory which privately recruits its students, assuredly for some yet-to-be-determined nefarious purposes. Listed on their site are several missing alumni, one of which we’ve seen before, Faith Arella the tattoo artist. Although yet to be directly proven, it is heavily speculated that Faith could be a Nephilim, or half angel/half human, like the main character of the Fallen movie, Aaron.

If you haven’t yet checked out Ocular Effect you can easily catch up by reading through the many resources for the game including the ingame recap, the discussion forums on UnFiction, the official OE forums and the extensive player-created OE wiki.

Check your local listings for the next showing of Fallen or watch the movie online at the ABC Family website.

Lost at Comic-Con

August 2, 2006 / Carie Ward

The Lost Experience got quite a lot of publicity during the San Diego Comic-Con this year. During the Question & Answer section at the Lost panel, a mysterious woman, who identified herself as Rachel Blake, started questioning the panel members on the Hanso Foundation. Despite the writers claims that it was just something they made up, Ms. Blake was adamant that both the films and The Hanso Foundation are real. She questioned them on Joop, fires in Iceland, organ harvesting and deaths of Hugh McIntyre and Darla Taft. Before she was escorted away by security, she screamed that the Lost writers had blood on their hands and that if the audience wanted the truth they should visit hansoexposed.com.

Once at the hansoexposed.com site, visitors need to register and start hunting down glyphs that contain codes that unlock segments of a video. These glyphs can be found just about anywhere: on websites, podcasts, magazines, and on cast members themselves. Once a new segment is unlocked, it then needs to be positioned correctly within the other segments to create a coherent video. So far, 21 of the 70 fragments have been unlocked. Although there is a leader board set up to track those who find the codes first, the codes themselves are spread across the globe, so cooperation is needed to find all 70 codes to expose the Hanso Foundation and tear it apart.

It’s still not too late to get involved with the quest to expose the Hanso Foundation. You don’t need to know everything that has come before to participate in the hunt for the glyphs. But if you are curious, Unfiction has several Quick Reference Guides to lead you through the three acts of the game. Rachel Blake also has her own version of what has occurred so far. Only by working together can the secrets that the Hanso Foundation are keeping secret be exposed.