Echo Bazaar: A Great Use of Mystery

If you want to entertain people with mysteries, then you need to check out Echo Bazaar. It's a free browser game with incredible depth despite its stark simplicity of mechanics. Even non-gamers can play this, that's how accessible it is. So why should you?

Because as magicians and mentalists we are mystery entertainers. While the primary mystery is almost always the how of the things we do, there is the frequently overlooked why. A truly great performer will enthrall an audience not with another Miser's Dream effect, but depth as a character and person. There needs to be a mythos to create verisimilitude and the desire to explore more deeply the reality that the mystery entertainer lives in.

Echo Bazaar is a paragon of the use of mystery in an interactive piece of entertainment. As of writing, I began playing on Thursday and have become addicted. Seriously, if it weren't for the limited number of actions you can take at one time, I wouldn't have gotten any work done these last couple of days. The game's abyssal depth just sucked me right in. There were new mysteries to explore at every turn and pursuing one lead just opened up new ones. I'm never short for something to do, and now that I've chosen an ambition for my character it's only getting more intense as I go. Everything happens for a reason, but I can't figure out what. Yet.

Click the link above and give it a shot. It's free and despite being so addictive doesn't require anything more of you than 10 minutes of your time a day, if even that. If you want to create mysteries, you have to see how other people are doing it. It's the same as a musician listening to multiple genres of music to find his sound.

Oh and while I'm thinking of it, there's a social element to. Facebook friends and Twitter followers/followees who are in the game can interact with you. I'm on Twitter as DrAVornoff. Just in case... you know, you were curious.