Perplex City        

It has been stolen and hidden somewhere on Earth. The people on Perplex City cannot travel to Earth but can communicate with Earthlings. So they give clues in the form of puzzles to help Earthlings locate the Receda Cube.

The whole game is about locating the stolen Receda cube. Perplex City can be played either as a treasure hunt or a detective mystery. One involves money to play and offers a cash prize at the end. A real-life award of $200,000 waits for the winner of Perplex City The other game has neither entry fee nor a prize.

A player begins with a starter pack that equips a beginner with issue zero of Perplex magazine, ten- track CD, 2 packs of cards, a tourist guide, and a wallet to store his card collection.

The players use puzzle cards. The cards are classified as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black and silver. The silver cards are the rarest. Each card has a puzzle on it. Silver cards contain complex puzzles. A total of 256 puzzle cards have been released.

Each card has a unique number which the player should enter in the Perplex City website along with his solution to the puzzle. These entries earn points for the player and he also gets his name put on the leader board indicating his total points. Perplex City has been around since 2004 and people are still solving clues hoping to find the Cube and get the prize money.

The detective mystery form of Perplex City has the alternate reality game angle. There is a whole virtual Perplex City world out there. A weekly newspaper called the Sentinel, personal websites, blogs, email… the works. There is a lot of team work in puzzle solving using these online tools.

The makers of Perplex City reportedly spent two and a half years developing it. The Perplex City website features around 26,000 registered players.

The puzzle cards contain puzzles of all types. There are some cards with fun and easy puzzles and some with complex puzzles. Some puzzle types are riddles, origami challenges, pop culture trivia, logical mindbenders, 3D mazes and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Review of Perplex City

Perplex City has started a phenomenon in which several people all over the world are involved in the world’s biggest treasure hunt till date. Perplex City satisfies several needs. Interactive story telling, real life treasure hunting, video games, puzzle solving, an online interactive community…an impressive list of features. There is no ideal age to be involved in the phenomenon of Perplex City. Sometimes quick witted children crack the puzzles faster than intelligent adults. Solving some of the cryptic clues in Perplex City involves lateral thinking. Solving these puzzles is a good way of exercising one’s creative abilities.

Perplex City is addictive and this fact is proven by several players who are hooked on to it. Players warn that Perplex City can take over your life totally.