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 Forum index » Meta » General META Discussion
Puzzle ARG
Moderators: imbri, ndemeter
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RoceKiller
Kilroy

Joined: 16 Mar 2008
Posts: 1

 		 Puzzle ARG
Idea for a puzzle hunting game inspired by ARG
Hi all

I have got this idea for a game, it is partly inspired by the world of ARG, by geocaching and by an idea I have had for some time now. And I would really appreciate some feedback from you guys, if you think it will work, how to make it better or if you want to help create it.

Well, here goes, I'll start by explaining the idea from the viewpoint of the unknowing soon-to-be-player (assuming for the example that you are attending a college):

You are walking around campus on you way to a lecture when you stop to read some posters on a wall. There somewhere in the corner you see a very small poster containing nothing but 10 rows and 10 columns of numbers, and no other clue to what it might mean. Curious to what the point of those number might be, you quickly write them down on a piece of paper, before you continue on your way to the lecture.

During the lecture you keep wondering about the numbers, until you suddenly realize that it is just the ASCII values for some letters.
Not remembering the ASCII table in your head you wait for the lecture to finish, before you rush out to look up the ASCII table on the nearest computer. Decoding the numbers the message says to go to a specific room on campus and look under the 3. table in the 2. row.

You immediately head to the room and find the table, and under it is another note. But this time the note contains no numbers but some text which seems to be encrypted. Writing down the text you head home, and over the next couple of days you try to break the code.

Using some statistical analysis and quite some trial and error you manage to break the code. The code contains something called a secret code, a puzzle id and a url.

After entering the url in your browser you land on a page with two possibilities, one is to login with a username and password and the other allows you to enter a puzzle id and a secret code. Having no username or password, you enter the puzzle id and the secret code. The webpage confirms that your secret code is correct and leads you to a sign-up page.

After you complete the sign-up you are lead to a page with a high-score, where you see your name near the bottom of the list and the amount of points you where just awarded for solving the puzzle.

Curious on how to get a higher ranking (and having fun solving more puzzles), you click on a link called "trail heads" where you see a list of puzzles you haven't solved.
Some of the puzzles on the page contains nothing more than a real-world location of ... something, some of them contains a puzzle for you to solve right there, and some yet contains something entirely different.

Okay, I will stop the story here, I think you get the general idea. ;)
The webpage will contain the following possibilities (after logging in):


    * Highscore (weekly, montly, over-all, etc.)
    * Trail-heads
    * Solved puzzle
    * Cew puzzle


The highscore and trail-heads I have explained, the solved puzzle will be a page where you can enter puzzle id and secret code of a puzzle you have solved (after being signed-up.) And new puzzle is where you can contribute your own puzzle owning points when others solve your puzzle.

There are two requirements for a puzzle. They need to contain a trail-head and a trail-tail.

The trail-head can be a online text (which could be directions to some GPS location or the puzzle itself), which would be listed for all registered users to see or the trail-head could be unlisted (and therefore not show on the trail-head list, so it would only be possible to solve the puzzle by stumbling on it in real life or perhaps somewhere online).

The trail-tail must contain a unique assigned puzzle id, a secret code and the url of the webpage. It is allowed to encode that information or otherwise obscure it in any way the puzzle make might want to.

No other requirements are made for the puzzles, as to encourage as much creativity in creating the puzzles as possible.

All puzzles that are not solely online (partly/completely offline should be encouraged) will have some metadata attached to them, such as country and city, as to allow searching for puzzles in the neighborhood.

Points will be awarded when completing a puzzle both to the one completing the puzzle (the hunter or tracker) and to the one making it (the puzzle maker).

The hunter will receive some amount of points based on the difficulty of the puzzle, and the maker will receive points based on the time since the puzzle was last solved. I have done some calculations for a system to award the points with the aim to encourage the puzzle maker to create not too easy puzzles, yet not to hard either. I can provide the details if you are curious.

I hope that I have not lost you completely; I would really like to get some feedback on this. Please remember that the "rules" explained above is just my idea, and everything is up for discussion. ;)

I do have created some of the functionality of the webpage already (I am a webdeveloper), but I am really bad at (web)design, so if anyone would like to help creating a great design, it would really be appreciated. ;)

Please comment, thanks. ;)

PostPosted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 12:10 pm
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notgordian
Unfictologist


Joined: 23 Nov 2006
Posts: 1383
Location: Philly

 		UPenn had something like that two or three years ago -- the guy running the game was inspired by the annual Microsoft puzzle trail for interns. If I recall correctly, it might have even received some sponsorship money from MS for a couple of the weeks it ran (they gave prizes for the first three to complete each week)

Here are a few suggestions to help it take off based on my memories of that experience:
-Weekly puzzle trails: the highlight of the version some students at my university ran were weekly competitions -- the advantage of this is you won't mess with player expectations. They also included a "very hard" puzzle every week on the website.
-Playing in groups: let the players form small teams to work through the challenges / accrue points -- it's not quite collective intelligence, but having people to bounce ideas off helps when you get stuck in a rut, and getting people searching for teammates is good word-of-mouth advertising for your game. Another advantage is you can then incorporate puzzles that are internet-based and location-based, with teams relaying answers / puzzles / clues via cellphone.
-Beware of prizes: the reason the game "failed" was the team behind the game got too caught up in the idea of awarding prizes to teams that did well. When they tried to monetize the game by having a modest entry fee, participation dropped off sharply and immediately. A final prize is fine...just don't pepper the trail with too many "bribes".

ALSO: be careful about leaving physical items as the clue -- instead of going through the trouble of writing down the information on the poster / note, a player might find it's more convenient to just walk with it and deal with the puzzle at their leisure.

It's a fun idea and gets a lot of participation...you'll want the first clue to be peppered around the campus, and having too high a burden of puzzle-solving entry might limit the community you create. Good luck!

PostPosted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 6:00 pm
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