Can you help me find this puzzle/interactive fiction website?

April 11, 2012 1:23 PM

I'm looking for a website I found years ago that combined prose and pictures to create a series of puzzles, but I do not remember what it was called. The notable thing about it was that it had 12 puzzles, and they are dispensed to you weekly, with a story and master puzzle arcing across all twelve, leaving you with a 3 month interactive experience. Does this ring any bells?

Unfortunately, it's been long enough that I have forgotten almost all of the specifics. I do remember it was very stringent on the weekly schedule, there was no working ahead, and if you didn't log in weekly or near weekly it would restart you at the beginning. I also remember very clearly that the first puzzle had to do with an ouroboros. The name, I think, had a bizarre animal name in it, like platypus or narwhal, though I may be off on that.

Does anyone know the name of this website I'm remembering, and, if it still exists, a URL? Know of anything else similar?

posted by shovel_mage to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Don't know the specific one you're looking for but for something sort of similar there's Notpron "The hardest riddle available on the internet."
Less puzzle, more "oh my god this is driving me insane, are you kidding me!!!"

But, you know, interesting.
posted by Mister_Sleight_of_Hand at 1:38 PM on April 11, 2012

Was it The Beast, the tie-in game from the movie AI? It ran for 12 weeks in 2001 but it didn't have 12 specific puzzles. There was a recap/roundup MeFi post in 2002.
posted by bcwinters at 1:42 PM on April 11, 2012

Best answer: Probably Planetarium.
posted by inkyz at 1:48 PM on April 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you! It was Planetarium. And enough time has passed that I should be just as baffled by the puzzles as I was last time.

I'm still open to similar games too, if anyone knows of any.
posted by shovel_mage at 2:05 PM on April 11, 2012