Tag: acheron (Page 1 of 2)

Omnifam Wraps Up

December 4, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

Players of the Omnifam ARG found themselves at the end of the road today with the addition of a credits page on one of the in-game websites. The grassroots endeavor had been playing since May of this year, and was tied to the US television series ALIAS. Scanning through the list, it shows that the team of Puppetmasters includes people who have been on the other side of the curtain for previous ARGs, such as Acheron and ARGTalk.

ALIAS-themed ARGs have had a long history, with two previous “seasons” of games. The series started as a web puzzle in its first season, and morphed into an online adventure for the sequel, both of which were created and sponsored by ABC television. While this third season was a grassroots effort, it was much more interactive and contained more elements of a traditional ARG. Sadly, with the recent news of ABC’s decision to recently cancel ALIAS, the possibility of a fourth season is very much up in the air.

2nd Anniversary Puzzle Trail Completed

June 21, 2004 / Steve Peters

After three days of intense puzzle solving, a select few intrepid ARG’ers completed the 10 puzzles that comprised ARGN’s 2nd Anniversary Puzzle Trail. Dozens of players speculated, researched and contributed solutions to the puzzle series that culminated with tribute puzzles to Chasing the Wish, The Beast, Lockjaw, and finally Push, NV.

Puzzles were contributed by former puppetmasters, who were coaxed out of retirement to resurrect some old favorites. Special thanks go out to Scott Rossi (Plexata), Bill Shaw (Acheron), Jonathan Waite (JMX), Dave Szulborski (Chasing the Wish), Dan Carver (The Beast) and Derek Jensen (Lockjaw) for providing quality, fun, and sometimes nostalgic challenges.

To show our appreciation, we’re awarding prizes to the first players to have completed the trail, which required emailing a specific address here at ARGN. In order, the first three to cross the finish line:

1st Place – Omnie
2nd Place – JustinCase
3rd Place – Danman_d

Omnie will receive her choice of any item at the ARGN store, plus a $20 Amazon.com gift certificate, while JustinCase and Danman_d will each receive an ultra-cool ARGN sticker to adorn their favorite CPU. Congratulations go out to everyone who played. Maybe we should make this an annual event. Let us know your thoughts at [email protected].

Finally, for those of you who were following along, the trail consisted of 10 puzzles:

Puzzle 1 (The Beast)
Puzzle 2 (Lockjaw)
Puzzle 3 (Plexata)
Puzzle 4 (Metacortechs)
Puzzle 5 (Metacortechs) [user: malvolio / pass: innerdolphin]
Puzzle 6 (Acheron)
Puzzle 7 (JMX)
Puzzle 8 (Chasing the Wish)
Puzzle 9 (The Beast)
Puzzle 10 (Lockjaw)

All the spec and solves can be found in this Unfiction thread. Great job, everyone!

Acheron Earns Pick of the Month

May 25, 2004 / Steve Peters

It’s just come to our attention that the recently concluded ARG Acheron was honored by being selected as EpiGuide’s April 2004 Pick of the Month.

Congratulations go out to the Acheron PM Team! Well done!

JMX, Acheron Wrap Up

February 20, 2004 / Steve Peters

Two major ARG events finished up over the last week or so. The 6 level hardcore puzzle competition JMX was finally solved. JMX spanned months and provided countless hours of fun and frustration for the players. A final chatlog can be found here.

In addition, the time-travel ARG Acheron came to a conclusion this last week. If you played or were following, you may be interested in the PM post-game chat log, a copy of which is posted here. Acheron was plagued by many behind-the-scenes challenges, but the PM team withstood everything that was thrown their way, plugging on to give their players a great ARG experience.

From the rumor mill comes a pointer to two sites: www.beta-7.com and www.gamerchuck.com. We haven’t been able to check into these at all yet, but wanted to pass the info along. If anyone can make any sense of these sites, let us know.

Also, word comes to us that Aware is slated for a mid-summer launch and a spring pre-game. Folks are also keeping an eye onÂ www.lacunainc.com, which is connected to the upcoming movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.Â Nothing conclusive there yet at all, but who knows?

Completed ARGs and Hopeful Possibilites

January 23, 2004 / Steve Peters

The ARGN staff had a great winter break, but now it’s time to get back to business. A lot has happened in the past few months, so let’s get up to speed, shall we?

Acheron has been progressing. The time-travel related ARG has a very nice Guide up and kept current, so be sure to check things out.

A Matrix-related game caused a buzz and ran for 8 weeks beginning on October 1st of last year. As we were part of the development team, we just didn’t feel right about shilling it here, but hey, now that it’s over I guess it’s okay. Codenamed Project MU, this ARG was a fan-fictionesque game taking place in the Matrix universe, but not directly involving any actual characters from the movie. The trailhead was at MetaCortex, the company that Neo worked for as Thomas Anderson at the beginning of the first movie.

According to The Guardian, this was “the most successful ARG ever, with around 12,000 players and visits
logged from 118 different countries.” Admittedly, not all of these players were actively involved throughout the run, but the response definitely exceeded expectations.

Project MU employed many of the classic ARG techniques of blurring reality with the game world, utilizing emails, IM’s with ingame characters and even a Halloween night phone call that went out to almost 1,000 players.

From our viewpoint now looking back, Project MU really set a precedent for a new form of fan-fiction. While not endorsed by the film’s producers, they had no problem with it whatsoever as long as it wasn’t connected with a commercial enterprise and didn’t “degrade their intellectual property.” In case you missed it, you can find discussion and links to all of the pertinent sites at Unfiction.

In other news, Hidden Alliance has been showing signs of………. something. Hidden Alliance is an ARG that has, as far as we know, been in development since 2002. We’re not quite sure what, if anything, is going on, but the situation is being monitored at Unfiction.

In addition, there have been quite a few instances of possible ARGs that have so far become dead ends. It was thought something was afoot that was related to the Stephen King Dark Tower series of novels, but it turned out to apparently be a small fan-based site. Other possibities that went nowhere over the past few months included Paycheck, RYT Hospital, IRobotNow, Lacuna Inc., Hunt for Riddick, a Harry Potter site, and even a Doom site.

So, currently, Acheron’s you’re best bet as far as live games go, but you could always wait a few weeks……

The ARGs of Summer

August 29, 2003 / Steve Peters

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve been able to post any news, as there just hasn’t been a lot of news going on. The summer has been pretty quiet, as far as new announcements and events go.

Chasing the Wish kept throngs of players occupied, and finished up two days ago on August 27th, much to the bittersweet delight of fans. Although the story of Chasing the Wish has wrapped up, word is there are still quite a few loose ends leaving players hanging and chasing the wish of a sequel.

Literally on the heels of the Chasing the Wish finale, Acheron began showing signs of life, showing that the folks behind this game seemingly were indeed waiting for Chasing the Wish to finish up. The known introductory site pages have been updated, and it seems momentum is building for a proper launch any time soon.

In addition to saying farewell to CTW and hello to Acheron, ARGN and Unfiction have announced an East Coast version of their Super ARG-Fest-O-Con. This time, ARG afficianados will be gathering in Orlando, FL on November 7-9, 2003. There are already many fun things planned, along with a few things that I’d tell you, but I’d get killed for. For more information, see this thread.

That’s about it, well, that we know of. Remember, if you hear rumors of something, or find something suspicious, drop us a line! Hope you all had a great summer!