Innovasion: Review of the #Liverpool @Biennial Alt-Reality Game

Despite the impression yesterday’s posts might give, I hadn’t taken leave of my senses – I was playing the Liverpool Biennial’s alternative reality game, “Innovasion”.

Run by Hope Street Limited, Innovasion was played around the Biennial’s venues, with small teams of participants following a trail of clues set by the unseen WolfCrew.

Summoned by mysterious e-mails, we gathered in different locations around the city, to follow a trail of clues that led us to different public artworks and Biennial venues. Along the way we were accompanied – and filmed, followed, and surveilled – by actors from Hope Street Limited, playing the “agents” of the mysterious corporation, Creative Control.

Although it started as a conventional treasure hunt, my group found ourselves seeking passwords to e-mail accounts hidden in plain sight on buildings, collecting dead drops left around city centre streets – as much basic trade craft as orienteering.

The whole experience became distinctly surreal when a road accident outside Lime Street led to dozens of police dashing into the area, and closing off the streets – shortly before Creative Control was due to hold a “rally” on Lime Street plaza at 2.30.

God knows what the “civilians” watching made of it – a dozen identically dressed Creative Control agents standing to attention while a youth dance troupe performed, a succession of strange speeches about Creative Control’s massively successful international businesses, and a parade by Irish Republicans.

Not sure about the last one – who knew the Biennial could afford so many extras?

Afterwards, the race was on to finish the puzzles, and find our way to Creative Control’s mysterious “launch party” at 7pm. When we got there…well, something happened. But we seemed to live through it…

It was great fun – and in keeping with the Year of Health and Wellbeing, we more than got our exercise for the day! I went to Biennial venues I wouldn’t otherwise have visited, and also ticked off a few that I’ve been meaning to go to, but haven’t quite managed.

Overall, I really enjoyed myself, and would certainly take part again; from chatting to some Biennial peeps at the party afterwards, I understand it may run again. If it does, I hope they’ll look carefully at what worked, and what didn’t.

There were some issues; in particular, the design of some clues needed work – assuming knowledge of Cold War Cuba’s economy is a high standard of general knowledge, and if my group had crossed the street earlier, we’d have gone to FACT to watch “Back to the Future” in the mistaken belief it was the next step!

The main issue seemed to be a lack of thought about failure modes, or how to recover from them. My group found it impossible to achieve our victory condition – as we’d apparently jumped tracks to the trail followed by another team, who’d already completed it – and this, along with the earlier problems, didn’t go down well with some in my team, who felt a little cheated after a long day.

Personally, I thought that futility fit reasonably well with the back story, and I suspect it would have been less of an issue for the others if we’d known or suspected that we were effectively competing with other teams.

These issues were a real shame, given the hard work of all the performers involved, and the interesting back story (more of it next time, please!). These are the sort of things that can be easily addressed, and hopefully will be before the next Innovasion.