Perplex City is an immersive puzzle-filled card game that has more in common with a gigantic treasure hunt than a typical CCG. Rather than competing against one or even a room full of players each contestant in the Perplex City game is on his (or her) own solving the interlocking puzzles, riddles, cryptograms, mazes and hieroglyphs, all of which yield clues as to the whereabouts of the 'Receda Cube,' which has been stolen from other-dimensional Perplex City and hidden somewhere on earth. The first person to find the 'Receda Cube' earns the grand prize of $200,000.
But finding the Cube won't be easy, first players have to solve the puzzles contained on the 256 Perplex City cards, which are sold in packs of six for $4.99. Each card contains a scratch-off number and players who have solved the particular puzzle on the card have to go to the Perplex City Website, punch in the number and confirm their solutions in order to win Perplex Points and obtain clues. Cards also provide numbers that players can text message in order to obtain more clues. The Perplex City game will certainly appeal more to tech savvy young adults who do crosswords, Sudoku, and cryptograms rather than to typical CCG players. The Perplex City cards are bigger (postcard size) than those of a normal CCG and the target demo is older.
GTS Distribution, formed by the recent merger of Gamus Distribution and Talkin' Sports Distribution, is the exclusive U.S. distributor of Perplex City. The Perplex City game, though it could be played by teams as well as individuals, is not a candidate for organized play -- it is better suited for coffee shops, dinner parties, and commuter trains than for in-store activities. Players have to be at ease with the Internet and cell phones and ready to take on competitors from around the globe. There is an immersive quality to the Perplex City game -- the game's backstory runs to more than 50 pages on the Perplex City Website and the twisted geniuses at Mind Candy, the British company behind the game refuse to slip out of character for a second, claiming that they have been charged by beings from another dimension (Perplex City) with the recovery of the Receda Cube.
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Mind Candy, which launched the game in England last summer (don't worry all 66 cards from the original release will be included in the U.S. release along with 66 new cards), plans a U.S. marketing campaign for the game that will start in early 2006. Although details of the campaign are not known at this time, in England Mind Candy made use of text messaging and the Internet in very innovative ways in a series of localized campaigns targeting a specific city and its environs.
