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ARGNet Insider - Issue 4.2

ARG discussion panels, crossword comics, immersive plays, trauma toys, and puzzle cards! It's a good week for spending money.

There are more than a few time-sensitive ways you can spend your money on cool ARG-adjacent entertainment over the next few days. Thickett has even introduced a free preview of the experience to let you try before you buy!
  • Everything Immersive - Spring Fling - No Proscenium is holding a two-day long virtual conference this weekend (starting March 27th), and registration is only $10! ARGNet will be holding a panel discussion at 1PM EST on Saturday titled "Covering the New Age of ARGs", alongside No Proscenium's Anthony Robinson, Night Mind's Nick Nocturne, Inside A Mind's Jamie Foster, and the ARGonauts podcast's Marn Silverman. 
     
  • Thickett Season 2 Starts with Free Orientation - To introduce new players to the wonderful world of Thickett (season 1 was previously covered on ARGNet), immersive theater / ARG creators Cirque du Nuit are holding two free orientation session missions to introduce players to the gameplay. Those sessions will be held on Friday April 2nd (8:30PM EST) and Saturday April 3rd (2:30PM EST) - and while the sessions themselves are free, you do need to sign up first.
     
  • The Puzzle Keyring is Back - Years ago, puzzle designer Richard Malena-Webber created the Puzzle Keyring, a series of simple flashcards that provide solving guides and overviews to many of the most common puzzle types. After years of being out of stock, the helpful set of cards is now available for purchase (either as PDF or physical set of cards) on DriveThruCards.
     
  • Honeylambs Trauma Toy Restock - Honeylambs is a website that sells "trauma toy" stuffed animals, pulled from the depths of hell. Over the past few months, the Honeylambs YouTube and TikTok channels have been gradually introducing followers to the toys' backstories, establishing its position as a kind of eldritch American Doll company.
     
  • T-shirt Shaped Escape Rooms and Podcasts - In the fourth episode of Room Escape Artist's Reality Escape Pod, David Spira and Peih-Gee Law talked to Illinois escape room company CU Adventures about many things, including their innovative Solve Our Shirts project, which centers a puzzle experience around a single shirt that manages to pack in quite a few surprises into a single article of clothing.
 The Last Month(s) in ARGs: March 2021
Cruciverbalist Love Story in Comic Form
You have until March 30th to back Hayley Gold's crossword cartoon, which tells the same story from two different perspectives (supported by a series of a dozen in-world crossword puzzles you can solve as you read). The Kickstarter campaign features a series of mini-crosswords that feed in to a final meta-puzzle, so this campaign will have you puzzling from day one!
Read More
ARGNet Insider: From the Archives
Back in 2009, alternate reality games and serious games went hand-in-hand. Games like World Without Oil helped people and organizations imagine potential futures and how they would respond in a variety of scenarios to great acclaim. One scenario, however, got too close for comfort, leading to a scaled back project.

In spring 2019, the Hawaii State Department of Health partnered with the Hawaii Research Center for Future Studies to produce the alternate reality game Coral Cross, a "playable scenario" on the island of Oahu to explore the population's response to a pandemic. The game was set to play out under an accelerated timeline, with every day of gameplay representing a full month of game-time, to explore responses to a global flu pandemic.

However, once the game's launch day rolled around, the H1N1 virus ("swine flu") outbreaks started in earnest, the nature of the project shifted dramatically as life imitated ARG, to avoid spreading confusion. The resulting campaign focused much more on educating the populace, tracking pandemic awareness in real time.
 
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