The Crawling Chaos

Overview

18 years ago, Leopold Princeps, then just a science education advocate, stumbled across a rift in the Swinburne Astrophysics department and a group of alien-worshipping cultists. After discovering that the cultists planned to open the rifts fully and assimilate Earth with the realm of Abbith, Leo escaped and founded the Sarcio Institute of Scientific Research and Education. Publicly just a non-profit advocate and sponsor for scientific research and education, it secretly works to seal the rifts and thwart the goals of the cultists.

The cultists had acquired a set of ancient stones they could use to control and open the rifts fully, but they were stolen by a defector and hidden away inside golems. The Sarcio Institute seeks to obtain the stones to close the rifts and defeat the cultists. Now the two factions are racing to acquire the stones, control the rifts, and determine the fate of the world.

Rules

Teams compete against each other, playing as either Nyarlathotep’s cultists or Sarcio agents, attempting to fully open or close the rifts respectively. Each team receives a map, a pen, and their team identifiers on arrival at the starting point. They will have 20 minutes to follow their map and complete as many puzzles as they can, following all instructions they receive.

• Players work in teams of five. They must wear their team identifiers and stay together at all times.
• Upon arriving at a puzzle, the players must attempt to complete it before proceeding to the next and marking off on their map where they have been. Some puzzles will be harder than others, some will give the players multiple chances to get it correct.
• Puzzle answers are decided by a majority of the team. If a team’s answer is correct, they may retrieve an ancient stone from that puzzle and must move on to another puzzle.
• If a team is caught cheating, they will not be allowed to move for 1 minute. Cheating includes:
  • Using outside help such as the internet, apps, Google, books, people passing by, etc.
  • Taking more than one ancient stone from a puzzle. This includes if you lose a stone; lost stones will not be replaced.
  • Switching teams once the game has begun.
  • Starting a puzzle if another team is already at that puzzle. If one team is already at a puzzle, others teams must go and solve other puzzles instead, and wait until the first team leaves before attempting that puzzle.
  • Splitting a team into smaller groups to go to multiple puzzles.
• When the time limit runs out, all teams must return to the starting position with the ancient stones they won. Whichever side collected the most stones wins.

About the Game

The Crawling Chaos was a pervasive game designed and run by me and my classmates for our Pervasive Game Design Lab class in the second semester of my second year of university, using Swinburne University as our gameplay environment.  Our thanks to our tutor David Harris for his professional input and feedback.

Credits

Game Design Team

The game design team designed the game's rules and mechanics, and managed changes to the game design document and live play session.

• Jean-Luc Brelaz
• Morgan Curtis*
• Burju Kocoglu
• Julian Lia
• Nickie Loney
• Tom Vernau
• Bronson Walker

Narrative Team

The narrative team created the characters and background story for the game and its marketing.

• Emily Cox
• Will Fairhurst
• Sam Huffer
• Trent Kosi
• James Roddis
• Emma Watson*

Production Team

The production team was in charge of the visual design, fabrication and printing of all materials and props required for the live play session.

• Sarah Howarth
• Jason Lu*
• Mitchell Manganaro
• Will Tat*
• Oscar Watson

Marketing Team

The marketing team was in charge of devising the game's social media marketing plan, creating and managing the game's social media platforms, and video and photo documentation of the live play session.

• Stuart Black
• Liam Dunstan
• Josh Hardy
• Michael Nuttall
• Lauren Stampoultzis
• Chuan Tan

Note

Team members' surnames were not listed in the game design document, so I had to rely on Blackboard groups and forums. Team members whose names are asterisked were not listed in the team's group on Blackboard, but did post in the discussion forum, so I can only assume their surnames. This is especially the case for Will Tat, as there were multiple Williams posting in the discussion forum, but the content of his posts best matched The Crawling Chaos.