Jonas Rosland Jonas Rosland

How I built an Alternate Reality Game - Part 1: The Why.

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This is a multi-part blog series. This is part 1.

2 weeks ago I launched something I’ve been working on for a while - an Alternate Reality Game. For those of you who have never played an ARG before and wondering what I’m on about, read on!

A little back-story; I love puzzles, riddles and mysteries. Of course there’s the satisfaction of solving them, but there’s just something about the journey that’s always been more intriguing to me. It’s fun to learn as I go, test my skills, gain more information, and being engulfed in the story and game mechanics.

So with that in mind I spent some of my spare time creating a little game, sort of an interactive online story also called an “Alternate Reality Game”. It’s not a point and click adventure, you’ll have to rely on your existing knowledge and perhaps learn a few new computer science skills. You’ll have to dive deep, guess and ask yourself (and other entities) questions to get to the end. Since this is the first ARG I’ve done I would love to get your feedback by either reaching out on Twitter or chatting in the #arg channel on the {code} Community. Just make sure to keep spoilers away from the other puzzle solvers :)

In the next few blog posts I’ll share how the ARG was built (without spoilers), with the final blog post explaining the puzzles and open sourcing the code for the whole game. A big shoutout to our {code} Catalysts who beta-tested this a while ago, you rock.

Start your journey by going here: arg.jonasrosland.com.

PSA: To all of you who have played ARGs before, you might think this one is a little too easy. It was created as a learning experience for me and sort of introduction to ARGs in general, so that was the whole point :)