Perplex City is not like any other game. Though the whole production has been designed to be modular and nonlinear, I will try my best to explain.
At its heart, Perplex City is a puzzle game. The various puzzles are featured on 255 trading cards of varying difficulty – the harder they are, the rarer the corresponding card. Puzzles range from simple word games, such as matching animals to the special noun used for a group of them, to math problems, cryptography exercises and geometrical puzzles that will have you scratching your head. Each card is manufactured as a post card from Perplex City itself and describes the problem in terms of the trials and tribulations of the city’s residents as they work to solve the mystery of “who stole the legendary Receda Cube?”
Hold on to your hats, folks, because this is the tricky part.
The Receda Cube is the most culturally, historically and scientifically significant artifact of Perplex City, a thriving civilization on an alien planet (whose people all mysteriously resemble Earthlings). The Cube’s arrival heralded an era of peace on Perplex City, so everyone wants it for their own. Thus, a group of Perplexians, working with the prestigious Perplex City Academy, have spread these puzzle cards throughout earth in the hope that we will be able to sharpen our minds, skills and knowledge enough to help them find the thief and return the relic to its rightful place.
If this premise works for you, you will probably decide whether you enjoy Perplex City or not. A huge amount of literature, websites, stickers and errata has been produced to make this a “gaming experience,” including a glossy, full-color magazine that describes the city and its inhabitants and numerous websites where you can communicate with game characters. You must report your answers to each puzzle on the game’s main website, where a character will keep track of your Perplex Points – your score, in essence.
But it doesn’t end there.
A quick look at the Perplex City website reveals an account of a “live event” sponsored by Perplex City creator Mind Candy, in which hundreds of players had to collaborate to find clues and solve puzzles throughout San Francisco. The site breathlessly adds that, “The hunt for the Cube can lead you on all kinds of real-life adventures. Already there have been messages written in the sky, spectacular escapes by helicopter, emergency phone calls and secret meetings around the world. Who knows where the hunt could take you?”
The concept is reinforced endlessly. The opening tutorial on the website takes the form of a dialog with game characters and quickly leads into a character’s blog. If you want clues, the fastest way to get them is to have them sent via text message by yet another character. Simulated chat transcripts and event logs abound. Most of the material is fairly well-written, as long as you’re not looking for Shakespeare. If you can’t bear to read, there are even podcast summaries available.
But where does that leave you, the gamer?
Astute historians of gaming will note that this isn’t the first time that a gaming company has set out to subvert the real world in one way or another. Pre-9/11, a conspiracy game by the name of Majestic antagonized and tantalized gamers with phone calls, texts and instant messages that were supposed to blend seamlessly into the user’s real world experience – though, because the messages were written with proper spelling and grammar, this probably wasn’t the case. Majestic was shut down due to real-life terrorist concerns, and while Perplex City seems to take some of its cues, its focus on creating a cohesive online world seems more promising – at first.
However, for all it tries to do, Perplex City isn’t a role playing game, an adventure or even anything that resembles a traditional mystery solver (though some of the puzzles do remind one of the horror-puzzle games of yore). It lacks a software interface to a traditional, persistent world. It lacks a sense of character beyond you, yourself. It lacks significant gameplay beyond the cards and the online features. For some, this might make it feel like the gaming equivalent of trying to figure out if Lonelygirl is a fraud. For others, the vicarious experience of solving the mystery and competing for the grand prize of $200,000 might be a real thrill.
Perplex City is not the average game, and it’s not for the average gamer, though one of the top scoring players on the leader board is only 16. If you want the fun and excitement of appearing on a show like “The Amazing Race” without the hassle of auditions and international travel, Perplex City might appeal to you. If you just want to solve puzzles and trade cards, Perplex City might appeal to you. If you’re looking for something that will transform your every day existence into a no-holds-barred, white-knuckle ride of suspense, danger, adventure and two-fisted cool … keep looking.