Themes and Theory

The events, puzzles, and narrative of the game explore the trails and imprints of the objects and spaces. The spirit of a dinner table is both created and tempered by its usage as an object upon which we place food for consumption. Early on in the game, players are forced to confront and recognize their assumptions about such ordinary objects when they find they are prohibited to speak of an object’s formal name. Ortgeist exploits our collective schemas and scripts of ordinary life, infusing the day-to-day with myth and magic. A dinner party at the end of Act I follows every rule of dinner-party flow, starting with a cocktail hour and finishing with dessert. Players are rewarded for following etiquette, but common-sense decorum is tilted askew as players are found making small talk with a tree during cocktail hour and proposing toasts to a chair during the main course.

The game’s “real-life” installations throughout Jackson Park encourage exploration and adventure, with players using tools to explore the rift between worlds (through the soundwalk on their cell phones) and collaborating with one another as well as NPCs to solve a variety of puzzles. A pervasive combination of hunting, sleuthing, wandering, meddling, and role playing contribute to the dizzying sense of ilinx players experience when traversing the metaphysical boundaries between worlds. The dreary urban landscape is painted with the brilliant colors of cultural lore, histrionic characters, and melodramatic “scenes” playing out over three Acts. 

Ortgeist is an alternate reality game and interactive theatre premised on the enchantment of the ordinary in a whimsical haunting of Jackson Park in Chicago, IL. Our conflict is one of occupation: spirits of the indoors treading on the outdoors, players occupying passageways, sound occupying silence, the extraordinary occupying the ordinary. Gameplay emerges from various methods of reconciliation (or lack thereof).