In 2012/2013 The Secret World (my beloved Funcom MMORPG now left to rot) launched a partnership with Alice&Smith, small ARG company, to collaborate on writing a mission for the City of the Sun God investigative mission. Not only it was one of the most elaborate and mind tickling missions I had ever experienced... but it made me want for more; The Secret World had its fair share of puzzles and ARGs, all of them written beautifully and leaving you wishing there was a way to experience new ones since the older ones were all done.

Enter The Black Watchmen, a full game divided in seasons and multiple DLCs where you take the role of an Agent solving mind-tickling "puzzles" (it's so hard to call them that when most of them require the good ol' pen&paper gimmick to keep track of everything that goes on) that space between history, chemestry, code solving/cracking and much more.

I can't really do The Black Watchmen justice by just talking about it due to its nature and the game is very obviously coded for a niche audience of people who enjoy Alice&Smith's games such as Nite Team 4 and Ahnayro: The Dream World, but if you were ever remotely interested in puzzle-solving games different from Resident Evil/Silent Hill, Viewfinder/Subliminal or Call of Cthulhu/Nancy Drew/Poirot/Sherlock Holmes that require you to tab down on your game and go scour the Internet for that sweet sweet answer by making connection upon connection and interacting physically with websites or e-mails set around by the game itself, give The Black Watchmen a try.

Of course, you can experience the kind of gameplay that awaits you (for free) by wandering over the newest Rose Cottage mission - it's browser-based, no downloads. The community around these ARGs is collected and extremely helpful and the forums hold archives of old hints (no outright answers) that can be perused at any given time to give you a hand in going forward.

All in all, an amazing and fantastic game - even if unconventional by many standards.