This review contains minor spoilers about the tone and some aspects of the tasks, but should not significantly impact your experience.
“Trust me – you dunno what you’re capable of until you come and work with us.”
Imaginative. Resourceful. Tenacious. The way she smiled made me believe those things of myself.
The video glitches into black, and I’m already looking forward to my next meeting with Daphne. After Lockhart, it was nice to see someone normal working here.
I check back in my Induction Week Passbook, but that’s the last video for day one. I flick back over the rest of the documents, then pick up my remaining four envelopes curiously. Who knew what mysteries, what challenges, these brown paper sleeves hold.
I would have to wait until tomorrow to find out.
I received The Distraction Agents free of charge, but all opinions are my own. Here’s my full disclaimer.
The Distraction Agents
The Distraction Agents is a game, a challenge, a puzzle and a story in a box. Receive your package through the post, your instructions via email and online films, and let the Agents guide you through the challenges, tackle the tasks and reveal the code to unlock your prize!
~ Third Angel
The experience is created by Third Angel, an immersive theatre company more used to live performances. The Distraction Agents is their foray into the remote performances that have grown in popularity in reaction to Covid. I’ve had great experiences from immersive theatre troupes turning their hand to something like this (The Lucky Ones comes to mind), so I had high hopes.
The theming seemed to be about a mysterious agency, but not in any way similar to The Lucky One’s Capital Experience. Rather than a nefarious corporation, the Distraction Agents seek to “make life a little more interesting”. And I was to be their latest recruit.
Life in Covid times is interesting enough in some ways, but not in terms of my day-to-day life and activities. So a bit more excitement sounded right up my street.
Special delivery
The parcel had turned up almost unexpectedly in my postbox. I remembered agreeing to do a new at-home ARG (alternate reality game) but when the Delphine Apollinaire parcel turned up, it took me some time to work out what it could be. Had I ordered a gift for a friend from them?
Luckily, Google came to my rescue, and I figured out it was part of the Distraction Agents. To help further, an email landed in my inbox a day or two later, drawing a connection between the two names – the initials, if you hadn’t spotted it yourself.
I opened up the parcel to reveal eight objects: a letter, five brown envelopes, a small padlocked bag, and a stack of postcards. I went for the letter first, as seemed obvious.
“Dear New Recruit, welcome to your Distraction Agents Induction…”
The videos
The email contained a link to the Distraction Agents website, hidden away on the Delphine Apollinaire website. The web page contained links to thirteen videos. In the original run of this game, I believe the videos were released a day at a time, three a day for four days, and the finale on day 5, so I decided to follow this routine for my own play.
I clicked on video one, “Welcome to the Department”, and was greeted by an older man wearing a waistcoat and glasses, who introduced himself as Lockhart. I later had reason to doubt if that was in fact his real name, or one chosen to have some impact on me. Lockhart to me is a vain and foolish professor from a certain children’s novel, although that didn’t seem to bear any resemblance to the man in the video.
He spoke confidently. He welcomed me to the team. He guided me through the first envelope.
I won’t go into detail about too many of the videos, but there are four team members you will meet over the course of the week: Lockhart, of course, then Daphne, Paladin and Freya. Each had a profoundly different personality that came across more strongly than I expected in the short videos. These were my new colleagues, and in just a few moments I knew who would be my bestie for midweek wine, and who would be avoided where possible.
The envelopes
The brown envelopes were clearly numbered, and sealed with the sort of string tie that I associate so strongly with this type of game. As instructed, I opened envelope number one, which contained my Induction Week Passbook. This is the only envelope that I’m going to talk about in any detail – I wish I could say more, but my NDA prevents it.
My NDA? Ah yes, that was page one of my passbook. I signed it with my name, but not my real name. I suppose I shouldn’t tell you the name I used, that might compromise my position, or the Distraction Agents themselves… As Lockhart explained in the first video, I had to find a new identity for this experience, but to choose my new name carefully.
What do you think I chose? Tim guessed in a heartbeat, though I reckon most of my friends wouldn’t have a clue of its significance even if I told them what it was.
The remainder of my passbook lay out the plan for the rest of the Induction, including the four numbers I needed to uncover to open the padlocked bag, and who I would be seeing in my videos for the rest of the week.
Becoming a Distraction Agent
Each day, three new videos lay before me, and a task that would unveil one of the numbers to the padlock.
It sounds simple, and in a way it was so simple. Watch the videos, open the envelopes, crack the puzzle, find the number, and eventually open the padlock. But this wasn’t just a puzzle, it was a story.
I learned about the Distraction Agents. About how they created mystery out of the mundane. How they sparked imagination in the lives of ordinary people with the most ordinary of occurrences. A phone call. A small ad. A bunch of flowers. A single glove.
As the week went on, I wondered: who are the Distraction Agents working for? Are they benevolent pixies, trying to spark joy and create connections? Or is the purpose of their Distraction in some way dark. Give them bread and circuses… and in a world like the present day, where Distraction is so sorely needed and yet so deceptive.
And then there were small details in each video. Keys. An apple being peeled. Someone walking across the background. A small model of the Eiffel tower. Peculiar glitches. They made me wonder if I was supposed to be looking for something more.
The experience made me wish I had a commute. In particular, the task for day three, codename Distraction Spotter, was one that had a lot more potential if you left the house on a regular basis. Working from home doesn’t give you much opportunity for observation. Unfortunately, I had broken my toe, so even lunchtime walks to town were off the menu the week I played this.
How was becoming a Distraction Agent?
The quality of the components was excellent – stiff card, clean white pages, excellent typography. Just enough hand-finished touches to make it feel real, but not so many to make it feel imperfect. The videos, also, were well-shot, believable and a little unsettling.
This was not a hard puzzle. You could sit down with the game materials and crack them in well under an hour, if you were determined. If I were reviewing this based on the complexity or difficulty of the game, I would be rating it low.
But it wasn’t about the puzzle. It was about becoming a Distraction Agent, and that was a task I enjoyed enormously. I loved meeting my varied and fallible and intriguing colleagues. I also enjoyed the real world tasks that they asked you to do. If anything, the puzzles were a distraction from the heart of this experience, a checkbox to say that you completed or achieved something measurable. It was the immeasurable that made this experience memorable.
You have to put yourself into it, though. If you treat it as a box to be ticked or a game to be played, you won’t make it past probation. But if you experiment, try your own thing, put yourself out there… I’ll see you on Street Team. I’ll be looking out for the sign that you’re one of us.
I received The Distraction Agents free of charge, but all opinions are my own. Here’s my full disclaimer.