LONDON and NEW YORK, Jan. 31, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- Mind Candy, Europe's leading developer of Alternate Reality Games, today announced the launch of Perplex City in North America. Perplex City is a trading card based Alternate Reality Game blending real-life treasure hunting, interactive fiction, puzzle-solving, online communities, and live events in cities around the world. The first person to unravel the mystery and locate the hidden "Receda Cube" will receive a $200,000 reward.
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are a hugely exciting new area of the entertainment industry that mix real world events, websites, text messages, TV, billboards, magazine adverts, actors, sky writing and a wide range of other media to create an incredibly immersive gaming experience Two years in the making, Perplex City has defined this genre by creating its own universe - with its own corporations, characters, magazines and newspaper.
"The Perplex City phenomenon has already begun," said Mind Candy CEO Michael Smith. "There are currently many Americans and Canadians on our leaderboard who have been buying the cards through online retailers or eBay. We've now made it much easier to get access to our cards in North America, so everyone now has the opportunity to get immersed in Perplex City."
Players purchase mysterious silver packages that each contains six, cryptic puzzle cards created by a range of leading designers and illustrators. Ranging 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. Once solved, they provide the player with their first clues to the location of the buried treasure. Players enter their solutions online at www.perplexcity.com and receive a number of "Perplex Points," dependent on the difficulty of the card.
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, cryptic anonymous phone calls, stray emails, mystifying text messages and urban treasure hunts in random cities around the world. A hint recently sparked a gathering of players in London, where players soon discovered that there was a mole within their group, who quickly escaped via helicopter.
Currently, over 13,000 people are registered at Perplex City's website. Over 1 million cards have been sold so far. Fans have created a Google map of Perplex City, and online exchange sites have been set up where people trade cards. Over a dozen sites from Perplex City have sprung up already to help shed light on this strange alternate universe. Alternate reality online forums are constantly buzzing with thousands of people exchanging tips and speculating on potential hints to the Receda Cube's location.
Perplex City will be revealed to American retailers and press at Booth No. 6160 at Toy Fair in New York City on February 12-15.
The cards will be available from select retailers for approximately $5 a pack.
The Search begins at: http://www.perplexcity.com
About Mind Candy
Mind Candy is a media and entertainment company that specializes in puzzles - from Su Doku style logic puzzles at one extreme, to global, cross-media, treasure hunts, at the other. Mind Candy's particular focus at the moment is on the rapidly expanding fields of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and Cross Media Entertainment (XME).
The Mind Candy logo is available at: http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=2276