Riptide: The Lucky Ones (Play at Home)

As immersive as it gets!

The Lucky Ones is a digital, 7-day experience which comes to you via your phone, your laptop and through your letterbox.

Play as a team (up to 4) or go it alone in this interactive, immersive experience. Your choices will directly impact where the story goes.

Every now-and-then we play a game that is very hard to review; this is one of them. It’s not that The Lucky Ones was bad, actually quite the opposite, it was really rather good, it’s just that the less you know about this game the better. Depending on what you like, there is a good chance that this game will take you out of your comfort zone and have you questioning reality.

Riptide is a company that we had never heard of prior to playing The Lucky Ones, and this saddens me. I’ve had a look at their pre-pandemic offerings and my god do they sound exciting! I thought this game was immersive, but their ‘regular’ games sound epic!

So, I’m going to attempt to write a review that gives you an overview of what this game is about, without really giving too much away. One piece of advice I can give though, do not search on google for this game, you may stumble across information that gives away a lot/all of the mystery of this game. This game is great because of the mystery, so don’t ruin it for yourself.

CONCEPT/EXECUTION

The Lucky Ones utilises post, email, phone and internet, basically everything. It uses all of these platforms to immerse you in a world that will have you questioning everything. It all starts off with a very detailed questionnaire that asks some very hard hitting questions, but the more you play, the more you realise how these questions have helped to form your experience.

This is a seven day experience, and is designed so that every day you will have something to do. Now I know this sounds like quite a commitment but it is all very manageable and thanks to some of the questions, it works well with your work/life schedule. I found myself looking forward to receiving my next mission each day and wondering what I had to do, and how long I had to do it.

I do believe there is some flexibility with the timescale though, we had some tech issues one day so couldn’t complete the mission in time and were able to make up for it the next day so we still stuck to seven days. That’s one of the things that makes this experience stand out, although it’s obviously designed with many players in mind, it is very personal to you, and your input can affect how the game plays out.

When you play this game (yes, when, not if) be prepared for disappointment but know it will pass and soon you will be swept up into a twisting and turning adventure!

PUZZLES

To best describe this game I would probably describe it as a bit of an ARG (Alternate Reality Game), a game where it takes place in this world, but at the same time something just doesn’t feel right. The designers have done a very impressive job of making real world places part of this reality, I do wonder how on earth they managed to do it as it must have taken a lot of research on their part.

Anyway, I digress, without giving too much away, the puzzle types you’ll encounter are; decoding, internet sleuthing, observation, and even some theatrics (is that a puzzle type? It is now). You’ll find that most interactions will take place over WhatsApp and you’ll be receiving text, images, and video that will be vital to completing your mission.

That’s it, that’s all I can say on puzzles without spoiling the fun. This game won’t appeal to those who want pure puzzling fun, but if you’re looking for immersion then this game strikes the perfect balance of immersion with puzzling.

CLUE SYSTEM

Honestly, I’m really not sure how the clue system works, or if there was one, but I’ll guess at how I think it would work. This game is not a chat bot so your decisions really do make a difference in how the game progresses, I would guess that if you were stuck then your ‘handler’ would be able to offer additional intel to help you complete the mission. I am 99.97% sure that they would not break the immersion to assist you, they’re sneaky like that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I really didn’t know what we had let ourselves in for with The Lucky Ones, but life feels a little more complete now that we have played this. Go into this game with a clear mind and prepare to be immersed like you’ve never been immersed before!

Technically you can play this game in a team of four, but I pretty much played it by myself (Liz was away), although Liz did get involved in some of the puzzles. If you play this as a team I would be interested to hear how it worked for you.

TOOLS REQUIRED

• Phone / WhatsApp
• Internet
• Mailing Address

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players

Website: https://theriptide.co.uk/projects#/the-lucky-ones/

*Disclaimer: we weren’t charged for this experience, but this has not influenced our review.