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An "online Treasure Hunt" is being produced by Wellspring Interactive, Ltd., and scheduled to launch in about a month, according to the TimeHunt "Head of Clues," Danny Kodicek. In a post over on ARGN, Kodicek pointed to the teaser site, and explained that the online game included more than 100 pages of "interactive and animated puzzles," with notable contributors such as Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

It appears that registration will be required to participate, but also that TimeHunt will feature some facility to communicate with other players, called "Hunters" by Kodicek, as well as a physical treasure for the winner: "a replica of the Machina Universalis envisioned by Poverus, a machine that purports to answer all the questions of the Universe."

Some are wondering how much interactivity there will be in TimeHunt. According to later posts by Kodicek, once the game launches, everything needed to solve the mystery will be available to the players. Kodicek indicated that the development team expects the winning hunter will meet with success in about one to five years after the game is launched, and warned that the sample puzzles are not necessarily indicative of the difficulty level that will be found within the game itself.

One of the distinctive marks of past ARGs has been the ability of the players to affect the game universe. Whether that will be possible in a game that is complete from the start will be something to watch. It will also be interesting to see how the developers respond to the natural tendency of the ARG community to fall upon a new game like a school of piranha, devouring everything in sight in seconds.

For now, we're going with the assumption that TimeHunt will be a web-based "armchair treasure hunt," an online version of the sort of mystery first popularized when Kit Williams published his book, Masquerade, which encouraged readers to pore over every image in the minutest detail in order to find all of the clues to solve the mystery of where the author had hidden an ornamental rabbit made out of gold. Even if TimeHunt doesn't turn out to be an ARG, we're sure you'll let us know if it's fun!

Equi_design tipped us off that the fine folks at ABC aren't busy with just Push, NV:

The Alias web puzzle has been restarted for Season 2.

The Trailhead is at the ABC site.

The Discussion groups/FAQ/Trail are located here: [Yahoo! Group]

We've updated the summary page accordingly. The only thing I can say is the Trailhead page certainly doesn't make me wonder if "this is not a game."

It really looks to me now as if the whole Ring Thing was just a semi-static, oo-spooky web advertising deal. The movie site is fully active now—and it's quite pretty—but it just doesn't look like there's an ARG there. Still a lot of fun stuff to play with on the official site, if you're bored.

The following was posted to ARGN just moments ago. What does it mean?

In a world where it's becoming increasingly more difficult to distinguish between reality and imagination, Dreamworks is setting the standard for blurring the lines. After a very successful online murder/mystery marketing campaign for A.I., Dreamworks has cooked up another unique promotional strategy for the upcoming The Ring, a Gore Verbinski film starring Naomi Watts.

The idea behind the film is that a video is circulating that contains disturbing images. Once a viewer is done watching the video, the phone rings and on the other end, a voice says "You have one week to live." While on face value, the movie seems harmless enough, there's more going on. The Dreamworks movie is based on a Japanese movie released in 1998 that attempted to pawn off this "urban legend" as truth. The latest incarnation will tie into this original movie. Not only that, but along the lines of their A.I. promotion, it seems as though Dreamworks has created a few Internet sites that help to paint the movie as being based in actual fact.

If that wasn't enough, it appears that random people are reporting having received an unmarked videotape that contains the same weird images as the one in the movie with little or no explanation. Sounds like another intriguing mystery is afoot…

Update: It appears that the above is quoted from the Videoeta newsletter. Also, checking out the source code at the movie site will give you a long list of URLs at the bottom. Two of these URLs point to The Morgan Ranch website, which site definitely seems fishy. Odd characters in the source there too, not to mention the whole thing being, well, curious. I must say, I'm definitely intrigued….

"Push, NV" looks to be a massive scavenger hunt, with clues found in the television show (that is to air this fall on ABC), on the Internet, and in the "real" world. From ABC's description, it looks like the game is geared toward the individual player rather than a collective. Will LivePlanet be as surprised by the distributed problem-solving capability of the ARG audience as were the makers of the Beast? I can't wait until September to find out.