The Honeycomb mysteries
- Next.js
Overview
I like puzzles, and I managed to catch a live ARG once. It was great fun, and I really appreciated all the detail that had gone into the world building and timing of everything. Especially for a live event run by a small team. How hard can it be to make one?
The problem
I wanted to build an ARG that wasn't time sensitive like a marketing event, but that anyone could start at any time, without requiring additional monitoring or support from me like you get with an escape room. I wanted something more like an automated ARG.
What I built
Development is slow on this. The dev side of things is the easiest, it is writing the story and creating the puzzles that takes the most time. Testing is slow and mostly manual, as the nature of an ARG is that it moves across different platforms and media.
This one contains the main website The Honeycomb Group website but also utilises automated Gmail accounts, a YouTube channel, another website, a WordPress blog, a couple of Mastodon accounts and Firebase.
Characters, puzzles and the storyline remain the same. Dates are set relative to the sign up date. This makes the messages and documents have recent, realtime timestamps, so anyone finding it in two year's time would still feel the immersion of being in the middle of the story, as opposed to reading something that happened two years ago.
This has to be kept in mind for the storyline though, as it has been in development for over a year, and will likely be another year or two before the full storyline is ready to launch. As a result, the date has shifted throughout, and this means photos and videos cannot be seasonal. If day 2 of the ARG features a Christmassy background, it would have to have fixed dates, so where possible, these assets have to appear as though they could have been taken at any time of year.
So far the game utilises the main website, several unlisted pages on the site, a couple of subdomains, a WordPress blog, automated Gmail accounts, automated Honeycomb email addresses, and some Mastodon accounts.
Work is ongoing, but this is one of the lower priority side projects.
Screenshots
Homepage
Facilities: A little on the nose, but I felt it was important that the rabbithole is fairly obvious. I don't want people thinking they're actually signing up for a medical trial
People: A list of senior staff, or usefull hints for later?
Rabbithole 1: Sign up for a medical trial
Careful which pages you access, as "they" could be watching
After signing up, gain access to a Participants' Portal, containing some hidden coded messages to start off the adventure
What I learnt
ARGs are complex and VAST. I mean really vast. Every outcome, every decision, every clue, puzzle and piece of exposition has to advance the story while rewarding the player while also ensuring everything is solveable with the tools and information already provided.
This means LOTS of testing, and accounting for different levels of understanding of cryptography. Too easy and players might get bored. Too hard and players might give up.
Puzzles need to be woven into the storyline so that they are appropriate and make sense. For example, if someone has just given you a load of secret information and didn't encrypt it or hide it in any way, why would they suddenly give you a coded message to give you a link that goes to a page containing another code to crack, only to get a little more info?
Different characters have different preferences for keeping their documents and info private. This allows for more variety of puzzles, but in turn this means more testing to ensure the player is guided through the puzzles without holding their hand.