(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) I just had a meeting at Boing Boing headquarters with a Perplex City representative named Bill. He revealed to me a few pieces of this exceedingly rich and chewy alternate reality game. My head is still spinning, but the gist of Perplex City is that you buy packs of six cards for $(removed) a pack and enter a world of puzzle solving, interactive fiction, and real-world/fantasy crossover. (The makers of the game are happy to admit the inspiration came from Kit Williams' 1979 treasure hunt book, Masquerade, which provided clues to help readers locate a valuable "golden hare" hidden in the real world. The current edition of Masquerade includes the solution to the puzzle.)
Each Perplex City card has a puzzle on the front. Sometimes the puzzle will lead you to a faux corporate website or blog with additional hints. By entering your answer on the Perplexity website, you get points and can compare your ranking with other players.
Some of the cards have delightful gimmicks, like heat sensitive or ultraviolet inks that contain hidden clues. In addition to the obvious puzzle (I think there are 260 cards in the entire series, half of which have been released), each card contains elements of meta-puzzles of varying complexity.
Sometimes you have to send text messages to get information, or check the classified ads of newspapers in China, or in one case, be a published author to gain access to a research library that contains critical information:
Some time ago, the players had to get a character credentialed
to do research with a library. In order to do this the character needed to
be a published author. So a group of players *wrote a book* for it and it is
going to be published shortly and distributed under a creative commons
license from Lulu. The Perplex City publishing company is
http://seaside-press.com/ (though the book being published has not been
updated there yet).
Eventually, someone is going to solve enough of the puzzles and pick up enough additional clues to locate a real artifact secreted somewhere on the planet and claim the $(removed),000 prize — a six-inch block called the Receda Cube. (My eight-year-old daughter, who is as enchanted by Perplex City as I am, is convinced the cube is in our neighboring town of Reseda.)
Here's more information about the game from a spokesperson:
Two years in the making, Perplex City has defined a genre by creating its own self-supporting universe. First off, players can purchase silver packs containing six, cryptic puzzle cards have been created by a range of leading designers and illustrators. They range in difficulty from 'fun and easy' to 'captivatingly complex,' the wide range of unusual puzzles include beautifully crafted riddles, origami challenges, pop culture trivia, logical mindbenders, 3D mazes and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Many of the cards can be assembled together to create large maps or new puzzles, and there is often hidden content to find. Once solved, they provide the player with their first clues to the location of the buried treasure. However, the cards are only the entryway into Perplex City. Go deeper and there is a further series of interlinked puzzles which spill into the real world – from baffling websites, coded newspaper ads, TV clips, billboards, cryptic anonymous phone calls, stray emails, sky writing, mystifying text messages and urban treasure hunts in random cities around the world.
I don't play games, because I don't have time for them, but I'm making an exception with this one. I think it's going to be a genre-busting bestseller that will break open the floodgates to a new form of popular entertainment.
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