Perplex City (wordplay on the term "perplexity") was an alternate reality game (ARG) created by Mind Candy, a London-based developer in 2005. Adrian Hon was the producer, designer and director of the game's first and only season, in which players searched for "The Receda Cube" (also known as "The Cube"), an artifact of spiritual significance to the inhabitants of a fictional metropolis known as "Perplex City" and which has great scientific value. In the game, "The Cube" had been stolen and buried somewhere on Earth.
The game offered a cash prize of £100,000 (then approximately USD $200,000) to the person who found The Cube. Andy Darley discovered it in a wooded area located in Northamptonshire, UK, on February 2, 2007.
Clues were hidden in foil puzzle cards sold by Mind Candy. Each card presented a diverse puzzle, and even though they supplied extra story background, it was feasible to join the ARG without obtaining them. Mind Candy announced that the first set of cards for the new game season, called Perplex City Stories, would be released on 1 March 2007. In June 2007, Mind Candy announced that the release of the second season would be put indefinitely on hold.
Gameplay
Perplex City is an alternative reality game whose story unfolds through a series of collectible puzzle cards. Eventually, 256 cards total were released in four waves. The main objective of the game is to search for a cube named "The Receda Cube", a cube that is physically buried somewhere on Earth, whose location is hinted at through the collectible cards. Every collectible card had a scratch panel that hid a unique code that players can use to track their progress in solving the game. Additionally, each card has an individual puzzle that can be solved outside the main objective of the game.
Clues in the card may lead players to websites, blogs, emails, telephone numbers in the real world, and characters in the game "communicated" with players using blogs, such as in the case of Violet and Scarlett Kiteway, daughters of the Master of the Academy, the organization responsible for maintaining the cube. Players are also encouraged to contribute to the in-universe, online newspaper, The Sentinel, where players can communicate with each other and characters in the game to solve the puzzles.
Puzzle cards
Mind Candy marketed a range of puzzle cards as collectibles, which they sold in foil packs. Each foil pack contained six random cards which were selected from a pool of 256 cards. The cards were categorized into sets and further into subsets based on their rarity and difficulty levels. Unlike collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering or Pokémon, the cards are not designed for competitive player-versus-player "combat." Instead, each card depicts a different puzzle, with the rarer cards also featuring more complex riddles. Cards were marked with unique identifiers, which could then be entered onto the Perplex City website, earning points and a place on a leaderboard. Many cards contained hidden features, such as ultraviolet or heat-sensitive inks, and they covered a broad range of themes, from pop-culture trivia to cryptography and logic brainteasers.
Each card was a member of a four-card set. If all four cards were solved by a player, they received double points for each card in the set.