Olympics-themed alternate-reality game goes live

'Find the Lost Ring,' a new alternate-reality game that seems to be tied to the Olympics in Beijing, went live Monday morning.

(Credit: findthelostring.com)

As I predicted Sunday night, the Web site for a new alternate-reality game that seems to be tied to the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing went live Monday.

The game, known as Find the Lost Ring, is built around a story line in which a young woman named Ariadne says she woke up on February 12 in a South African corn maze with amnesia and knows nothing about who she is or where she comes from.

The game's conceit will be to have players help Ariadne find her identity through a complex series of online and, most likely, real-world clues and puzzles. Somehow, it will all be tied in to the Olympics. One clue on the game's site says she offers up the "fact" that, after waking up, she spent a week in the hospital being treated for her very rare form of amnesia and that doctors there "say I'm an Olympic-caliber athlete."

To me, it's all very Bourne Identity-ish, except probably without a lot of gun play and CIA involvement.

For the full list of clues that launched the game, see my blog entry from Sunday night, which includes photos and the text of the initial clues.