Sparrow's Creek

**Sparrow's Creek** is an augmented reality ARG that largely consists of reading text, navigating to certain areas, solving puzzles, and progressing through a very intricate and detailed story. It has won repeated Game of the Year and has gained a very dedicated cult following all over the world.

## Story

The story largely follows the story of a group of survivors from the "1st iteration", the first iteration of the universe which was ultimately erased to give way for the "2nd iteration", another, empty universe that often intersects with ours, mostly implemented through augmented reality. The interactions between the survivors of the 1st iteration, the new universe of the 2nd iteration, and the actions of the players themselves make up most of the story. The players play as a character named "Kira", a person from the 1st iteration linking up and contacting the few remaining connections they had after the 1st iteration was erased, and mourning the loss of their now gone loved ones. Players also participate as unseen, unknown forces by altering the real world which affects the in-game world as well, who are a large aspect of intrigue within the in-game universe as they perform actions outside of the character's understanding, which characters speculate to be fate, God, or some other supernatural force. The story grapples with many concepts such as truth, reality, nihilism, depression, death, existential anxiety, meaning, morality, ethics, the value of life and happiness, materialism, and more. Its cast consists of over 130 known characters, with many more probably still not found in unexplored paths. The story can begin anywhere but eventually requires the player to go to real-life locations and perform certain tasks in the real world in order to progress the story. This can be as simple as moving to a certain landmark, or solving a code and putting in the password, or performing a real-life task involving the mailing of packages, writing of messages, or other advanced tasks. One task involves writing a full letter to Kira, which can be done by email, who interprets the letter as a sign after she performs a kind of psychic prayer. Despite Kira having no discernable reaction upon reading the letter, the words the player writes profoundly alters the path of Kira going forward. Messages sent so far have included memes, random keyboard mashing, and abusive letters to Kira, to others who try experimenting with how certain changes affect her behavior, to people giving suggestions, to cryptic messages, to long, rambling heartfelt letters giving Kira genuine advice on her life going forward. It is unknown how the game is able to interpret these letters, and how it interacts with the code to determine the ultimate ending.

So far, there are around recorded 25,000 major endings, which can be gotten to by making various decisions and choosing certain dialogue with characters, or by altering the contents of the letter you send to Kira. There are hundreds of times more minor endings, who have similarities to each other, except for some minor details and minor dialogue changes. Almost every character can be killed off, including Kira, if your actions ultimately propel her to suicide, with the only exception being a character named Bulbus, a dwarf who for whatever reason is the only character who does not have a way to die in any of the known endings, earning him the nickname "the Immortal Dwarf". It's hinted at in some other endings that there is a way for Bulbus to die, but players have so far not been able to find the right path. Characters usually represent certain philosophical schools of thought, Kira for example represents Cosmic Nihilism, Bran represents Stoicism, Charity represents a religious point of view, Orel represents Existential Nihlism. All of the characters have frequent debates on various points of debate, and based on the decisions of the player/Kira, most characters can be shifted from one school of thought to another through long, arduous debate and slow change in their lives.

Playing a single playthrough of the game can be anywhere from 10 minutes (the shortest known ending, where Kira suffocates herself in her own bed before the game can even start) to 3 years. (the longest known ending, a multifaceted adventure and exploration which requires traveling to 3 dozen different countries, a hundred cities, various landmarks, completing certain tasks, volunteering for real-life charity work, and climbing up a large mountain.) The game is most popular in America, where negative income tax/universal basic income and a mostly automated workforce have allowed people to take years off to focus on the game, citing it as an almost spiritual journey. But people from other nations also partake in it, though it usually requires years of saving up and preparing before making the journey. Quests and goals usually involve local landmarks, with the story being centered around the real-life city of the player. For example, in storylines that involve a park, the game will find the local park and mark that as the place for the player to go to advance the story. In extremely rural areas or wilderness where landmarks cannot be found, a completely different story plays detailing Kira's isolation in the wilderness.

The community around the game has accumulated around the "Sparrow's Creek Forums", an online place where people discuss new findings, explore new endings, collaborate together to solve certain puzzles (there are certain puzzles that have completely stumped the community, and requires a community effort to solve. One includes an entire alchemical book written in cryptic runes and various dark web internet sites, and the translation of a cryptic song, all while referencing several pieces of literature. And another involves a stupidly well-encrypted code, with instructions hidden all over the document peeling off layer after layer of translation. They are currently on layer 5, have found layers 7 and 8, but are still in search of instructions on how to decrypt layer 6.) and overall create fanart and discuss certain endings.

The game has many, many themes, which vary wildly from ending to ending. Some are stupidly anti-theistic, while others straight up quote Bible verses at you as Charity has a divine revelation from heaven itself. It should be noted that Christianity as we know it does not exist in the universe of Sparrow's Creek, but has several parallels in the Sparrow's Creek universe. There are endings coming from very Christian, Buddhist, Communist, Materialist, Fascist, and Darwinist points of view. Some end in class revolution and the establishment of a classless, moneyless utopia, others end in cosmic enlightenment. This has led to the belief that there are many different authors, each writing their own story in collaboration.

To make it even more confusing, past playthroughs will affect future playthroughs, with Kira and the other characters having residual memories between each save file and each reset. The only way to start off clean is to reinstall the game clean. At least 3 suspected authors have been pinned down. One from France, one from the United States, and one from Indonesia. But all of whom have denied involvement. The authorship of this game is still a mystery, as it is published under "Kira Lovewell", the main character in the story, and to this day they remain incredibly anonymous. Given the extreme length of the story and extreme complexity of coding such a thing, how exactly this game was made is unknown.