Ægrus Somnium

Yesterday an alternate reality game was launched in Playstation Home. Anyone with a PS3 and access to Home (internet connection) can play. The game starts by looking around home for the strange graffiti, which is located if I remember correctly right to the right of your condo/apt. entrance.

The symbol is hard to make and looks more like a black sprayed circle on the wall, to me it did anyways, could just be my screen. Clicking X on this brings you into the ‘hub’, after a short download of course.  As you enter the ‘hub’ you are informed it was the early alpha tester zone and you are not supposed to be there by the narrator and shortly thereafter you learn that strange things are going on. From what I have read at Kotaku, and Playstation Blog, the game will be ever changing, gaining new content and areas on a weekly to monthly basis which sounds pretty cool to me. At least it makes me want to go back into home and possibly even spend a little loot to change my avatar’s looks since people will be seeing him. Just a few minutes I go I finished playing the “game” myself and have to admit it is amusing and has the potential to be pretty damn good. Your first task is to simply search the area for some pieces of paper for the narrator, once found you need to access a website from one of the consoles in the area and solve a puzzle which grants you a code to enter, the code then gives you a piece of a puzzle or map, not sure yet. You can also get another puzzle to do from a robot known as the “Stapler” who is near the first piece of paper you found, his puzzle are a bit harder to solve. To start his you need to do the clap action at a certain area to get the actual question and hint, then scour the web again. These sites you are using for the puzzles are actual websites and not just in game (this is the actual site you use to solve the Stapler’s puzzle “http://cafeconmiguel.wordpress.com/”). All in all this seems like it could be a great idea on Sony’s part, an interactive alternate reality “mystery” game to keep people drawn to Playstation Home. If you have a PS3 I’d recommend you at least check it out.