Army Of Zero - Game and £1000 prize (UK only)

Anyone know anything about this card game holding a puzzle?
Army Of Zero - Card Games and Prize Puzzle Competition



A mythical band of warriors takes its powers from the legendary creatures that their world has lost.

Heroes, friends and kin are cursed to face each other in battle, again and again.

Eighty-four characters hold between them a secret.

Army Of Zero is a card and dice game in which you and your opponent pit your warriors against each other. Choose the right character to use at the right time, and second-guess your opponent to decide when to attack and when to defend.

But the Army of Zero holds a secret. And if you can solve the riddle hidden in the cards, you could be the winner of the grand prize of £1,000!

Hi, my name's Steve and I'm the founder of Point Zero Games. We're the people who have published Army Of Zero.

Army Of Zero is two things in one. When you open the box, it looks like a straightforward card-and-dice combat game. It plays a bit like Top Trumps with dice, or a very simple Pokemon type game. But, but, but... the design of the 84 character cards is such that you can combine them and arrange them in various ways to reveal the answers to a set of interconnected puzzles. There are about 12 or 13 steps to solve (depending on how you count them). The puzzles all lead to a single answer, and whoever sends us the best solution by the closing date wins the £1,000 prize.

If you want to have a look as some of the cards, you can see some samples at www.pointzerogames.com/armyofzero (look under the heading "Take A Closer Look..." on the right hand side of the page).

If you've got any questions, feel free to ask. I don't promise to answer everything - some things you have to work out for yourself! - but I'll answer what I can.

Steve

Looks like a great game and puzzle, but I reside in the USA. is the puzzle really only open to UK residents?

Hi Guttom

When we started out, we found out that there's a lot of legislation around competitions and contests, understandably, and particularly where toys and games are concerned. We decided that, rather than spending a huge amount of effort making sure we complied with the legal requirements of each country, we'd focus on our local market.

Now we're surprised and flattered by the level of interest from outside the UK, particularly from the US, and if we were starting again, then we'd definitely look into making the competition open to a wider audience. Even now, we have the right to change the terms and conditions of the competition, so legally, we could change the playing field.

However, a lot of people have already bought copies in the UK, and we want to play fair with those people, and we think it would be unfair on them to introduce hundreds of millions of potential rivals (well, if we're lucky ) to their quest after they bought the game under the impression they were only going to be up against competitors in their own country.

Granted, they may not be thinking in exactly those terms, but we still think it's important to be even-handed, even if we're the only people that it's occurred to.

Given the interest level, though, we are going to change our shipping options on our website to allow overseas customers to purchase. We think people can get fun from the challenge of the puzzles, even if there's no prize at the end of it. We're currently working out the wording on the web site, and making sure that the restrictions on competition entry are quite clear for potential purchasers.

I'll post back when the game becomes available.

Thanks a lot for your interest!

Hello,

it looks a nice idea to have a puzzle in a game - so even if you can't solve it (or someone else does) at least you have the game.

I'd like to ask

1) are there any forums where people are collectively trying to solve the puzzle?

2) has any progress been made?

I'm currently busy but plan on having a go at this one in the summer - hopefully it won't have been solved by then.

thanks
tim

Hi Tim

As far as I know, there aren't any existing web communities where people are coming together to solve the puzzles. We have pages on FaceBook, MySpace and Bebo, so the places are there when/if people are ready. Or feel free to start one here!

Some people are starting to make progress - obviously, not everyone tells me everything, but what feedback I have received makes me think that we've got the difficulty about right. Some of the progress that's been reported back surprised me, because one guy solved one of (what I thought was) one of the harder puzzles relatively quickly, but what I think is hard and easy might not correspond to someone else's opinion/experience.

But - you don't need to worry about other people's progress, because the winner of the competition is not the first correct answer, but the BEST answer received by the closing date (April 2010). It's possible to get the answer without fully solving every puzzle, or to submit an answer that's partially correct, but the winner's going to be the person who gets the most elegant solution, or the closest answer (if no-one gets it spot on). So timing isn't an issue - a really good answer in April 2010 would beat an OK answer in April 2009.

Hope that helps,

Steve

Thanks, that is helpful. There not being a 'correct' answer sounds intriguing. Worrying too - I hope it's not like a tie breaker question where you have to write an essay on the Beauty of the Lake Districts (or something), because I'm rubbish at that. Stick to the logic+cryptography, I say!

I'll start up a discussion forum on here at the end of July, if there isn't one already.

Don't worry, logic and cryptography it is. And I promise you there IS a correct answer, but in terms of picking a winner, it's all about the person who puts in a solution that ticks ALL our boxes. That means finding all the parts of the solution and putting them together elegantly.

(Can you sense me struggling not to give too much away? You'll see what I mean.)

Posting back, as promised: Army Of Zero is now shipping to North America and Europe. You can order it at our online store, but as mentioned above, I'm sorry but the prize competition remains open to UK residents only.