NOTE: The following was posted on April 1st (April Fools). It is not to be taken seriously.Honest.

First off, I’d like to apologize for the delay in posting. This project is very much still alive; we have just been busy getting it done. We promise more frequent updates as we near launch.

Rachel’s Walk has been in development for nearly two years, and it has been a long, grueling journey. At this point I find it necessary to explain why it’s taken so long: this is not our full-time job, and it frankly does not pay the bills… yet. So, in the meantime, we have been forced to seek alternate employment in order to make ends meet.

Part of this search involves my personal effort to expand the business that is Darklight Interactive, and that involves getting the name out there and doing a lot of footwork. I’ve been trying to contact the right people, going to the occasional trade show, getting on all the right mailing lists, etc… etc… in the hopes that Darklight Interactive can make a name for itself and start attracting customers.

One of these efforts involved me trying to make contacts in the movie industry. Catering to the movie industry is not something out of the ordinary; ARGs have become what they are because of their ability to promote upcoming movies. In fact, in the past we actually have been part of bidding process for at least three different major motion picture studios (for legal reasons, I cannot mention the names publicly, but at least one of them has appeared on unFiction).

So, in an effort to make better contacts in the film industry, a few weeks ago I attended the Miami International Film Festival (the fact that they were showing David Lynch’s Eraserhead had nothing to do with it. Honest.)… and what a life changing experience that was. Luckily I had a foot in the door – I coordinated my efforts with two friends I went to college with that are now independent filmmakers – and pretty soon we were mingling with some rather meaningful people in the industry. Quite honestly, I wasn’t making much of it at the time; this “mingling” involved talking a lot of banter and drinking (it was at Miami Beach, after all), so I didn’t realize what an impact it all had…

…until I received the call that changed everything. Somebody was actually interested in this little project. I couldn’t believe it at first, and didn’t even remember talking to the person that called me, so I thought it was some sort of joke. No joke: soon found myself landing at La Guardia Airport to meet them.

So there I was… sitting in a board room on Park Avenue, with two motion picture studio “executives” (to this day I’m not sure what their job really was), explaining to them what Rachel’s Walk was all about. They seem genuinely intrigued by the prospect of it, and were interested in presenting this to the would-be producer.

“Can you write up a scene? It will make it easier for them to understand.”

I’ve never written a screenplay before, but I was so excited I agreed to do it. That night I didn’t sleep, and wrote six different drafts of a “teaser” for this project. I wound up writing what would be a five minute scene involving the four main characters to date.

The next day it was presented to the producer, and he had some reservations for it. But, to my surprise, he agreed to help out on the project… provided we make some “adjustments” in order to make the movie attract a bigger audience. By mid-afternoon they handed me a six page document detailing the changes they would want. I wasn’t thrilled with some of their suggestions, but the fate of the company I was trying to develop was at stake. They were willing to pay, and pay well, for this project to be developed, so long as it fulfilled their expectations and their desires. Besides, when it comes to making movies, they were the experts, not I.

So I spent the last six days writing a revised script for a sort of introduction to Rachel’s Walk, based on their suggestions. I sent it to them, and they said it was exactly what they were expecting. So it looks like this measly little project might turn in to a film of some sort!

So here is the initial draft of the script for Rachel’s Walk. Casting (out of NYC) for this short starts Monday.

To further express their interest in this project, the studio’s marketing team went ahead and created a “proof of concept” movie poster for Rachel’s Walk. Once again, not quite what I envisioned when I first thought of this project, but they must know what they’re doing.

NOTE: I don’t quite know where they got the actor/actress names on the poster… I think they’re merely filler… But, gosh, I *wish* I could get people like that to play these roles!

Despite all this, rest assured that the ARG is still in development. After all, we now have a movie to promote!

Thank you all for your support. Expect bigger and better things from Darklight in the coming year!

Hello, hello! I’m Kimber Fox, and I’m the newest member of the team working furiously to bring you Rachel’s Walk. My primary goal within the project is to type until my fingertips bleed, as that’s really what I do. As a professional writer, I know what an amazing rarity it can be to truly and completely love the project you’re working on – and let me tell you, Rachel’s Walk has me hook, line, and sinker. When I was first introduced to the story, it was captivating; I quickly invested myself in this project. Though we call it working, it is truly a labor of love. We are eager to share all of this with you, this thing that has come alive in front of us, and we really do believe that it is worth the wait. Over a thousand sign ups, guys! That’s unbelievable. You guys are fantastic!

I would like to think that I was brought in due to my incredible wit and fantastic imagery, or possibly because of my uncanny ability to evoke startlingly real emotions in my readers; however, I have a sneaking suspicion my 100 WPM typing average had something to do with it! All jokes aside, in just a short time, I have come to respect each member of this incredible team, and feel so privileged to have been given the opportunity to work with them on such an original, exciting endeavor. I believe so much in Rachel’s Walk, and it’s honestly the chance of a lifetime to be able to have a hand in something that I fully believe is going to change the way a lot of people think about Alternate Reality Gaming.

To echo Owen, it is truly overwhelming to be a part of something that has garnered such an outpouring of anticipation and excitement – especially considering the fact that it hasn’t yet begun! I know we are all so thankful for your continued support and typically gracious patience as we work hard to make Rachel’s Walk a unique, unforgettable experience. I promise you, your patience will be rewarded.

Thank you, again!
Kimber

On July 13th, 2008, two mysterious emails were sent to select players from an individual by the name of the “The Guide”. That led to a mysterious sign up page for some curious project named Rachel’s Walk, a project nobody knew anything about were nonetheless intrigued.

Over a thousand unique signups later, how things have changed.

Ever since that mail was sent I’ve been asked the same question numerous times: why send out an email for something that was hardly even planned? Didn’t it seem premature, especially considering the publicity circus that took place leading up to the last project?

Well, time for a glimpse at Rachel’s Walk history…

I thought of the concept for this project in mid-June, actually during a week of vacation when both my wife and son celebrate birthdays. At the time it was nowhere near the scope it is now, but it got me excited enough that I simply couldn’t contain myself.

But along with that I had an idea for an experiment: my last project, the one I personally called Shadow Watch (or BoL/SiD to the players), had a decent amount of signups because people knew I was the one running it. What kind of response would we get if people didn’t know I was running it? Would it be worth it to do? In order to find that out, the signup page has always asked for only the email address (since people knew it was me for Shadow Watch, they were more willing to provide full contact information. Such is not the case here; that level of trust did not exist). And, as expected, the signup page did not do as well as Shadow Watch did, at least not until the day we announced that we were doing it (for the record, that day we go 116 signups).

But what was Rachel’s Walk at the time the page went up? One could argue that it wasn’t anything: not much more than a passing thought, scribbles on a notebook I carry around. Besides the signup page, there wasn’t a line of code written, a single creative element designed. But as time progressed, especially after the involvement of Lauren and the others, we realized that this project could be so much more. And so it began to grow, and grow, and grow…

To give you a comparative reference, here is how the project currently stands compared to the past:

• Shadow Watch was a single database with a grand total of eleven tables in it (everything else was driven by XML). Rachel’s Walk is currently over 70 tables (does not include databases created by third party applications and services) that span at least five separate Microsoft SQL and mySQL servers.
• Every project we have run up to now was on the same physical server hosted at GoDaddy. For Rachel’s Walk we currently have six hosted servers at two separate locations, and a third location coming soon. One of our websites is load balanced for the first time.
• We have acquired six times more stock imagery for Rachel’s Walk than for all our past projects combined.
• I have a drive partition for all game content that has had to be increased in size at least three times (for those that are wondering: I have three separate backups I run – to DVD, off-site and to a separate USB thumb drive – that are run throughout the week).
  
• The Rachel’s Walk Visual Studio solution is at least ten times larger than Shadow Watch. It spans four separate assemblies, an undisclosed number of websites, and at last count contains over 50,000 lines of code (in C#) written entirely in house and specifically for this project.
• We have had at least three (maybe four) different project management solutions. To put the amount of content in perspective, the current project management site we are using has almost as many informational pages in it than the entire Wiki for The Lost Ring.
• In my original concept, I had planned no more than three “in game” characters. At last count, Rachel’s Walk has over twenty and climbing.
• Looking Glass Laboratories cost a little under $100 to execute. Shadow Watch had a total cost of $350. Rachel’s Walk has a running cost of over $4,000 so far in terms of hosting (websites, domains, bandwidth, etc…), content acquisition (stock images, software, third party licenses, etc…) and materials.
• I was doing this alone at first. We now have four active team members: graphic designers, content generators, professional writers, etc…

…and all the above is not counting the things we can’t really tell you. Suffice to say, it’s become something more than just a random thought in my head, and not something I was able to predict when the signup page went up.

From an implementation perspective, the workload involved in the design and development of this project is no different than other major productions out there. There is one big difference though: we don’t do this for a living. Unfortunately, we do have real world commitments, things that prevent us from giving exclusive attention to this project. For example, during this project’s existance I have lived in two different homes, had owned three different computers and have had no less than four different full-time jobs.

Had we the resources to work on this all day, this project would have launched and probably finished by now. But, alas, such is not the case. We try to set our own personal milestones, but everything from real life situations to changes in scope have pushed the dates further and further ahead, much to our personal dismay.

So, by today’s standards, we realize the signup page did go up too soon. But that was never the intention, and the page was never meant to linger for so long before game launch. The project simply matured, outgrowing the registration page and the short timeline that was originally planned. Would we do this sort of thing again, put up a page without any idea when the game will actually start? Admittedly, it’s hard to keep quiet about future projects anyway, but we will take these lessons in to consideration for future endeavors.

What does this mean for this game though? Rachel’s Walk continues being developed, inching closer and closer to the day when it is unleashed upon the world. Will it launch in 2009? Sadly, no… Right now my more realistic prediction is around mid-April 2010.

In the meantime, we would like to thank all of you and we continue to ask for patience and understanding for what we are trying to accomplish. We think it’s worth it: everyone that has come in and seen “behind the curtain” has seen how this project is doing everything possible to be revolutionary and shape the image of ARGs for years to come. We’re not going anywhere, and will continue putting our hearts and souls in this project to make it the best it possibly can be.

We hope you will not be disappointed, and we hope you enjoy the ride.

“Ever forward…”

Hello. This is Owen Parish.

I have been working on the more abstract elements of the project, composing text, designing mechanics and puzzles.

I’m a little overwhelmed with the anticipation we’ve observed, and I hope that we are able to produce something that will live up to the expectations of our audience.

The original reason for my introduction to the project was my experience with writing interactive fiction, so as well as ARG-style elements, the end-product may also have some of the characteristics observed in adventure games.

Unusual? Yes; I think that what I want most is to create something new. Of course, the hard part is doing that while still making it recognizable to your target audience, and not getting carried away with your own cleverness.

Of course, it could work the other way. Perhaps we’ll draw in some new players to the sub-cultural bubble.

David and I could hardly contain our excitement this morning when TheBruce, linked us to this article in The Guardian in which Keith Stuart writes:

But in some ways the really avant-garde work has been going on elsewhere – in the realm of the ARG, or alternative reality game*. Here, proponents like 42 Entertainment and Darklight Interactive create interactive experiences by placing information around the internet, on faked websites, forums and Wikipedia entries, encouraging players to work together to decipher the clues.

Maybe it is partially all the coffee I just consumed, but my heart is racing!  Our relatively small company has just been recognized on the international scene.  And in the same breath as one of the largest companies in the ARG industry.  We are extremely proud and frankly more than a bit surprised.

In the meantime, despite unfortunate distractions of our real lives — I continue to battle a chronic illness (which I write about in my other blog Novel Patient) and David has had to find a new job on short notice — we continue to move forward on Rachel’s Walk.  We’ve been working on all aspects of the game, but in particular Owen has been putting in a lot of hard work on writing copy for activities players will be able to do within the Dream Engine.

Much to my CPU’s dismay, I continue to render and render and render some more.  And in honor of occasion, I’d like to leave you with another small taste of what I’ve been working on.  Another “screenshot” from the game if you will.  This is one of my personal favorites, and I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Fairy River

First of all, we apologize for the delay between updates. Things have been hectic, to say the least.

We want to take this opportunity to respond to some questions or curiosities we have seen on public forums, as well as attempt to describe just what Rachel’s Walk is.

*NOTE*: This post borders on the edge of giving out more information than we want to at this time. So if we seem like we’re being vague or not explaining ourselves well, that’s on purpose.

Anyway, here are some of the questions we’ve seen.

“So this is an 80’s video game?”

If you look solely at what we are calling the “Dream Engine”, then yes, it is very similar to an “old school” LucasArts video game. But there is a lot more to Rachel’s Walk than that.

The “Dream Engine” is not the only interface this game will have. If you don’t want to deal with the interactive, game-like interface, there will be plenty of other ways for you to participate.

The reason we wanted such an interface is because it allows for a more robust interaction with an ever changing world, without the need for us to be sitting on the other side of the screen all the time. Using this standalone engine, you can explore and interact with the world at your own pace, in any way you like, without having to wait for feedback from us; the feedback is immediate.

Maybe we haven’t made this exactly clear: the “Dream Engine” is your interface in to an imaginary world, a world that exists only in the mind.  But, for every person that visits the dream world there exists a presence in the real world, and there are those that exist solely in the real world and have a story to tell themselves. In order to get the maximum enjoyment from Rachel’s Walk, you must be ready to explore both sides to fully understand the story being told.

“Screenshots? For an ARG?”

To be honest, this is the reason why we prefer to use the term “interactive fiction” instead of “alternate reality game”… People envision an “alternate reality game” to be a certain way, and we are trying to do something different and contrary to the norm.

What is an “alternate reality” after all? Rachel’s Walk is primarily a dream world where you will be interacting with a variety of characters, from rabbits to faeries, from dragons to centaurs. They are obviously not “real”, but you are visiting their world; to them, everything that occurs within the dream world is within their reality and you are but mere visitors.

Put another way, many people have described an ARG in the past as a “roleplaying game in which you play yourself”. Well, this is just that… except that you’re asleep.

Everyone expects an “alternate reality game” to follow the same style as every other ARG: some social networks, a few websites, a lot of emails bouncing back and forth, the occasional prerequisite cypher… There will still be some of that in Rachel’s Walk (but do keep in mind that we are not fans of “puzzles for the sake of puzzles”), but we are trying to do something different with the “Dream Engine”.

“Will there be other websites other than the main one?”

We do have a propensity to create elaborate websites, some of which are merely cosmetic (and serve only to relay contact information) while others are comparatively complex (with actual development and special functions). And, as has been the case in our past games, you can expect an “in game” form of communication; email at this level is too hard to manage, and we have found that a custom interface to manage all communications makes management and historical tracking of events much easier to manage.

Rachel’s Walk really is no different. Besides the main site that drives the “Dream Engine”, there are several other traditional websites to be explored and interacted with. There will be people in the real world to talk to. There will be multiple forms of communication, and there will be a presence on multiple social networks. The main site reflects your presence in our dream world, but there is most definitely a real world presence. After all, most people don’t sleep all day…

One of the concerns we’re seeing is that some players may not be too keen on the “video game” aspect of this. Quite honestly, although it would be really cool if it would happen, we’re not expecting every player to be traversing the world through the “Dream Engine”. But don’t fear… If the dream world scares you, there will be plenty to do in the real world. You will not be left out, and you will still be able to participate in the story and contribute.

So there you have it. If you’re looking for traditional ARG elements, we’ll have that. If you’re looking to satisfy your craving for 80’s interactive fiction, we’ll have that. We seek to appeal to a large audience, and players will be able to involve themselves in individual parts if they so desire.

As a programmer, one of the things that comes with the job description is knowing that some of the best things you will ever create may never see the light of day.

When the core development of Rachel’s Walk began, the “engine” that you use to navigate through and interact with the world was based on the traditional interactive fiction games of Infocom. Even though it had the added bonus of a graphical representation of the area you were in (we call it a “room”, even though it might not necessarily have four walls), the only means of interaction was a text box where the user would type exactly what he wanted to do.

This might sound like a very simple interface, but behind the scenes that can’t be farther from the truth. Rather than use an existing text parse (such as the “Z” interpreter pioneered by Infocom), I decided to write my own. I wound up with a very intricate text interpreter that was able to chop up a sentence in to parts of speech and determine what exactly you were trying to do. This included a word tree, so that multiple versions of the same command (“get” is the same as “take”, “pick up”, “grab”, “snatch”, “acquire”, “appropriate”, etc…) are treated the same way. This word tree even applied to items: it could be a “lamp”, or a “lantern”, or a “light”, or a “light source”, etc… You get the idea.

I spent weeks writing and perfecting this system, and am to this day still proud of it. It was one of the most remarkable things I’d ever created – from scratch – and everyone we showed it to was impressed.

But then we realized something… Who’s actually going to USE it?

I’m from a gaming generation that’s outdated by twenty years. Whereas a game like this might seem natural to me, the modern day “gamer” – who might not have been born when Infocom was around – wouldn’t know what to do with it. Think about this: consider every game that came out in the last ten or fifteen years… In how many of those games is the principle means of interaction typing text? I honestly couldn’t think of a single one in the last decade.

So that beautiful engine of mine was shelved.

In keeping with the traditions on which this game is based, we decided to use another “old school” game engine as a point of reference: LucasArts‘ SCUMM engine, an engine that drove some of the best games in the genre: the original Monkey Island trilogy, two Indiana Jones games, Maniac Mansion, Sam & Max Hit the Road and many more.

Comparatively speaking, designing this engine was absurdly easy. We now had only nine distinct on screen commands (give, open, close, pick up, talk to, look at, use, push, pull), mostly the same commands that are found in the LucasArts games mentioned above, and in thinking about it they had the right idea: you really don’t need more than that for a game of this nature.

Furthermore, unlike the SCUMM engine, you don’t actually see yourself in the world: it’s a first person view. There’s no way to actually move to another location in the same fashion as the original SCUMM engine (click and the character moves there). Therefore we had to use a compass rose as a means of moving from location to location.

Suddenly the learning curve for the interface is much more acceptable: click on a verb, click on an object (be it in the inventory or in the on screen view of the area) and done. We don’t have to worry about how many ways one can say “lamp” or “book”. We don’t have to worry if you wanted to “look AT” something or “look UNDER” it. The engine went from several thousand lines of code to a few hundred.

Unfortunately, we can no longer respond to someone typing “xyzzy”… You can’t win them all, I guess.

When we first began creating the visuals for the world of Rachel’s Walk, we looked to stock photography.  I picked out literally hundreds of images for David to download.  But they all had varying “looks”, and we quickly realized we would have to do something to make them all match if the world was going to have a unified appearance.

Around this time I was starting a new role playing game campaign with some online friends and was looking to make a portrait of my character.  I was looking around for free 3D rendering programs to use for this purpose and stumbled across Daz 3D.  I was so pleased with my render of my character and the power of the program that it occurred to me that we could make the whole world of Rachel’s Walk in this fashion.  Instead of being confined to what I could find on stock photography sites, I could custom render each “scene” to our specifications.

I presented the idea to David and he loved the render of my character and the idea.  But we realized that we would need more than just the free DazStudio software and few free models.  So I made up a proposal of all we would need to complete the game world.  We devised a plan with phases of purchases and a budget.  And then I got to work.

Though the basics of the software were easy to master, some of the more advanced features had a higher learning curve.  Frankly my initial renders didn’t look like much.  But with practice I improved.  As I improved I realized the need for more advanced software to complete the game world.  So we purchased Bryce and most recently Carrara.

The process has been (and continues to be) extremely time consuming and extremely rewarding as I slowly piece the world of Rachel’s Walk together.  And today I am pleased to present you with a sneak peak of 3 “scenes” from the game world in the form of wallpapers for your desktop.  They can be found in various sizes in the new Media section.  I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I’ve enjoyed making them.

Welcome to the “Rachel’s Walk” production blog!

Over a year ago I had the idea for Rachel’s Walk, and needless to say a lot has changed since then. My project was rather simple back then (I was a “one man shop”).  When I took on Lauren Soffer as Creative Director, we we started to realize that this project could be so much more. It could be more than “just another ARG”. It could be something groundbreaking, something wonderful.

As the scope grew, our style of development changed. We began to treat this more like a video game than an “alternate reality game”. To be frank, I sometimes hesitate using the moniker “ARG” to describe this project; I prefer to call it “interactive fiction”, a term coined by the great game developers of old  – Infocom, LucasArts, Sierra – which have influenced us and this project dramatically.

So we became a game design and development “shop” of sorts. We were no longer a huddled mass of “puppetmasters”; we had our roles: we were a programmer, a creative designer, a writer, a sound engineer, a video producer… We began to use management software, high end graphics utilities, and professional sound and video editing software. We downloaded several hundred stock images for use in the project. We got an absurd amount of hosting. We even had a budget.  All of this to help us reach the high production value we want to bring to you.

These production values, of course, delayed the project even longer, but we feel it’s worth it. Every time someone asks “when will this launch already?”, I find myself wanting to say the traditional video game developer’s response of “when it’s done”, but there have been so many failures in the video game world as a result of those three words. We do not want to be the ARG equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever.

But recently we decided that, if we are going to continue this style of development internally, we have to be a little more open to our fans. We decided to not stay completely in the dark, and instead be somewhat vocal about what we’re doing and how, all the time censoring ourselves from revealing anything that could be considered “in game” content.

So now it’s time for the world to start seeing what Rachel’s Walk will become.

Over the coming weeks this blog will allow us to talk about what we’re doing, strictly as developers and designers. We will talk about general game mechanics and some creative design, but we will NOT talk about game content, game plot or anything else that could be considered “in game”. That information you’ll just have to dig out of the rabbit hole yourselves.

There are three of us that will be posting on this forum: myself (Project Lead and Lead Developer), Lauren “Ineffabelle” Soffer (Developer and Creative Director) and our latest addition to the team, Owen “Twiler” Parish (Writer and Assistant Developer).

We also have a presence on Twitter and on Facebook, so we welcome all to you to follow us there. If you haven’t yet, we welcome you to sign up on the main website.

On behalf of all of us at Darklight Interactive, we hope you enjoy the ride.

In March 2009, Darklight Interactive (“DLI”, for short) officially announced their upcoming game Rachel’s Walk. The team behind Looking Glass Labs now aims even higher to bring an unprecedented cross genre alternative reality game. Rachel’s Walk will combine elements of traditional ARGs as well as “old school” role playing, adventure games and interactive fiction to engage players in an unparalleled immersive world. The players will have the ability to control and interact with almost everything around them – people, places, and objects – through a specialized interface. The players will have the opportunity to explore the vast lands, interact with the diverse population, and discover a domain that exists only in dreams.

Though much of the story is still shrouded in secrecy, DLI revealed that the players will follow a young girl named Rachel into an unfamiliar fantasy world, and embark on an epic journey that blurs the line between fantasy and reality, a journey filled with mystery and fantasy, heartache and joy.

Darklight Interactive was founded in early 2008 and has been developing Rachel’s Walk for over a year under the guidance of David Flor (Project Lead and President of DLI) and Lauren Soffer (Vice President and Creative Director of DLI). “This project has been an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of traditional ARGs in a way that we hope will make the story more immersive and engaging than ever before,” said Soffer. “As a storyteller first and foremost, I feel privelged to work on a project like this that puts the story as the center piece and lets all the puzzles evolve from the story.”

“Rachel’s Walk is set to be our crowning achievement, blending traditional alternate reality gaming and real world elements with a fully interactive ‘dream world’ that allows the players to have control over everything that happens,” said David Flor, President of Darklight Interactive. “It is truly a technological marvel, and for that reason we have put as much time and effort in to it as possible in order to make it perfect. When it is revealed to the world, we know that die hard alternate reality game players and traditional adventure gamers alike will not be disappointed.”

Rachel’s Walk is set to launch sometime in late 2009. Players can sign up at http://www.rachelswalk.com/.

Press please contact Darklight Interactive at info@dlimedia.com

(c) 2009, Darklight Interactive – All Rights Reserved
“Omne ignotum pro magnifico”