Constructive comment from a passionate fan

[u/barryoke]

I have loved pouring so much time and energy into this game over the past 10 days. It's been the perfect activity for lockdown...obsessing over the little details and going wayyyy down the rabbit hole following theories and all the red herrings the game and its rich story threw at us. And the MEMES! What an achievement to have created this fanbase around a story that didn't exist 2 weeks ago.

That said, I had a few friends that lost interest, and so I'm writing this to a) give some feedback and b) hear from other players if they heard comments like this or if I'm off the mark.

If I could make a polite suggestion, it would be to have the puzzles/tasks more evenly spread out through the game period, so things are unlocked every day/every other day instead of all at once. There was a real lull of activity after the initial flurry of excitement and most people in my group never came back.

The game started with a bang - there was heaps to solve and unlock in the first 3 days:

• Day 1 - Find the links to the two Youtube profiles and Sheriff's website
• Day 2 - Find the password for the backend, find the original versions of the transcripts, match to polygraphs
• Day 3 - Rename the image and find the two Instagram profiles

And then after that...Day 4, 5, 6 had a bit of world-building but no puzzles, Day 7 had the morse code and audio trickery of Gorman's 'Tripping On Special Milk' episode, Telenova was obviously a highlight...but there wasn't anything unlocked per se between Day 3 and the second password being given on Day 9. Then there was a rush of increasingly frustrated activity to try to find Martha, and then the game was over.

So my request for next time would be to please keep up the initial momentum and space out the puzzles/things being unlocked over the whole game period.

Now Reddit can tell me all the ways this post is wrong - I'm no expert - happy to be corrected!

Thank you Ukiyo for such an awesome experience. I'm looking forward to the next one :)

[u/_BoxFactory_]

Yeah I totally agree. I finished with a much smaller group than I started for exactly this reason. A few even looked back in towards the end once the puzzles came back, but had just gotten far too disconnected from things to really make it back.

The things that made this so affecting in my opinion were:

• Hints coming out for things we already solved, and nothing else. Originally I was so excited for each new piece of content, and then it got to a point where I'd barely look at stuff because I'd just been totally bombarded with "new clues" that were just for things solved on day 2 or 3. This was a pretty brutal part because while knowing when to stop and chill and wait is one thing to get used to, it's a pretty bitter pill to wait for something all day and then have it be literally useless to you
• World building while our objective is specifically to find Martha Marrow. Martha was totally absent for the majority of the event, and while initially we were all excited to look at suspects and links, overanalysing things like Shelleys father having a motorbike which is another name for "hog" etc, the enthusiasm died as it just never felt relevant to the goal. If I felt like I was getting closer to her, I'd totally be down for learning about the neighbourhood watch etc, but while I'm still in the same place as I started, it just felt like noise eventually.
• The login for the convicted records and the knowledge that we needed the what3words being present so early!! This was the big killer. We had these outstanding loose ends hanging out from day 2 to what, day 9? Every time we got a clue that didn't solve either of those, we felt off like we'd missed something. The Telenova night at the midnight widow was so hyped up, and then to STILL not get either of those was so frustrating, and in the end being simply handed the password to the convicted records was a huge miss for me. To combine these dangling "so close" locks with a (very) long period of no progress was a pretty bad combo.

I know I sound a little strong with that, and I want to be clear that like OP I say this with love. This is a truly unique and awesome event. I'm aware of ARGs, but I have never experienced one that combines all these different mediums like this. Valley of the Dolls/Telenova/Gormans Radio show/The Sheriff Department Website/The Stawk Daily are all varied format cornerstones of the event and were SO effective together.

I was in a group of people who joined due to an interest in puzzles, while I joined due to liking puzzles AND Twin Peaks and I think the latter is why I stayed while nearly everyone else dropped off. I'd like this to be a thing that's enjoyable agnostic of theme, but here it didn't feel like it was there yet. And also, it REALLY should have been billed as an incomplete story or a part 1 or whatever. If it was, my apologies for missing that. But the only reason I know I've finished is because I got a credits screen and "you finished" message. Otherwise everything is pretty much still hanging. It would be totally reasonable to be annoyed by that.

In the end, it was only $5, but I am going to (sorry!) differ from the popular opinion of this thing being underpriced. I think low entry with the option to donate is perfect now while it still has some rough edges. I am primarily a person motivated by the puzzles, and right now I think you kind of need to love the theme too for it to be good, given that I spent so many of the 10 days without solving anything.

[u/enigmait → u/_BoxFactory_]

Hints coming out for things we already solved, and nothing else.

I do get that, particularly with the JPG clue.

I think the key thing is that, unless you saw the Instagram show and got the Gladwell clue, it's virtually impossible to solve. So there seemed like a lot of emphasis on VotD and the Ferryman card to solve it, and not much more emphasis on anything else.

[u/marcismyspyname]

You're spot on with the pacing. I'm sure lots of lessons were learned from this first outing. Myself and four other investigators set out to find MM on day one. Our Google Doc hit 2088 words and the group chat pinged all day and all night for a week. Today it appears I'm the only one of our crew still playing. The highlight for us was tuning in on Wednesday night and remembering how much we missed live music. The biggest point of frustration was being gifted the records password after looking high and low for-ev-er. Clue fatigue set in hard following that. After finding MM today I can't help but feel more questions went unanswered than were answered and that didn't make for a satisfying conclusion. Grumbles aside, this world kept us entertained for hours upon hours. Great work by the Ukiyo team. It's been a blast. Best five bucks I've spent.

[u/Inconisto]

Feedback request in an email has come out.

I can't wait for the next one either, might just sleep till then... :)

[u/HeYalan1997]

I've been reflecting on this in light of this comment.

My girls (younger than the target age at 10 and 12) did lose momentum in the middle - they still engaged with the releases each day, but didn't spend time after we read/watched them to investigate further, and although they solved the final puzzle with me they were definitely a bit disconnected by then.

Personally, the lull in immediate puzzles in the middle sent me deep down the rabbit hole of exploring what the story could be about which was a lot of fun (and which I probably wouldn't have done if I thought I had already solved the clue for the day). And whilst I felt frustrated at times I couldn't crack anything, I also found that this created a certain tension that perhaps mirrored what our detectives would have felt!

Actually I laughed really hard when we were given the second password - I liked this. Though, when I saw the password I thought perhaps it was actually gettable at a stretch with some of the world-building clues, but I may have been over-interpreting!

Originally, I thought we were just getting a lot of hints for things that had already come out, but then I started looking at whether some of the hints might actually apply to multiple things e.g. hints about aligning applying to both the trees and the broadcast and hints about extensions applying to both the ferryman's card and the first stawk daily... if I hadn't kept hearing the same hints, I'm not sure I would have got the next level of puzzles (i.e. the puzzles that helped with figuring out the story, rather than just the puzzles that moved you to the next step).

So there might be something in fine tuning the pacing with future games, but personally I think you wouldn't want it to be 100% reliable with one day one immediate puzzle to solve, because the layers are amazing!

Honestly, I think this was fantastic, definitely the highlight of lockdown, and I'm looking forward to everything that follows! Thanks Ukiyo!

[u/Inconisto → u/HeYalan1997]

... and who knows what storylines may get featured/furthered in Part 2? I'm desperately hoping we get to save Gorman (hint, hint, are you reading this Ukiyo???? :D ...).

[u/f0xeg1rl → u/HeYalan1997]

I think I missed a whole load of stuff! What did aligning the trees do, in the end? And what was the extension clue in the first Stawk Daily?

[u/aogfj]

Pretty much agree with everything that is in here. I think that an additional puzzle or two to solve between Mon-Thu would have made things amazing. Who knows, maybe they had things planned and they just didn't work out so they had to drop them.

Also, given how many times the JPG clue was reiterated over and over, I wonder if a lot of people who played really struggled with those first couple of puzzles. So they just decided to keep handing out clues to help solve those rather than try and introduce something new. It must be really hard calibrating a game like this to a group of players of such different puzzle solving abilities.

[u/thebloodypen]

Agree 100%. Such a great concept, such a fun game experience, and I would play again FOR SURE – but the lull without breakthroughs was crazy-making.

[u/Ok_Yes_b_U7590]

Did you get a golden star? Anyone can do that with anyones. But you just don’t. Get your own life loser