The client’s request was for me to come up with a concept for an immersive experience website that encourages players to actively participate in the game’s community while the game was being developed. The goal was to cultivate fan interest in the upcoming game to the extent that they would willingly register for a newsletter and add it to their Steam wishlist.

I teamed up with my boon companion Thomas Oger and we started thinking.

Exploration and discovery
So after having discarded and challenged more conventional ideas we arrived at this: A hidden collaborative digital experience where the users had to team up, explore, locate, and extract fragmented and encrypted data from the game’s lore, development, and other sources. This experience would also evolve and get upgrades as the game’s development progressed and the users collaborated to extract more and more data.

I wanted it to be all about teamwork as the game Den of Wolves is a co-op game. So we made a site where the players could dive in, collaborate, and share their wild theories on platforms like Discord and Reddit.

Art direction and design process
While defining the retro terminal style of the UI and having designer Paul Witherden taking it to the next level, I took on the task to art direct and design the interactive map view and what the glitched out decryption moments looked like in the experience. These were realised in collaboration with WebGL developer Einar Öberg.

Forget about the typical Hollywood hacker vibe—I wanted something real and ugly-not-ugly. Drawing inspiration from actual exploit tools and the demoscene, we crafted a tool that feels like it was cooked up by a lone wolf hacker person using whatever she finds to make it run. Think PETSCII character sets, one typeface, and a punchy color palette. We had a blast using our past from the retro demo/gaming scene, adding  ASCII art, text-based lore, and PETSCII illustrations to give it that extra flair. And seeing our community soak it all in? Pure joy.

Reception was very positive and it was a joy following the first batch of dedicated fans in the community going all in on trying to solve this alternate reality game even if it’s just the first early version. And we’re still work in progress with this one so stay tuned for further updates.

Extract

Reactions

Stream takeovers at the 2023 Game Awards
During The Game Awards, Lurkit supplied 160 streamers with an OBS URL. To ensure that creators felt safe and happy, the platform communicated that it was a sponsorship event and something would happen during the TGA stream. But, to maintain confidentiality upon 10 Chamber’s request, creators weren’t told about the Den of Wolves title launch, breach timing, or even the nature of the sponsorship. At the exact time Ulf, the CEO, went up on stage at the TGA for the reveal, a message said, “Your stream has been breached. Go to DENOFWOLVES.COM ” appeared on all 160 streams.

Magnus V Östergren : Creative Lead
Thomas Oger : Producer
Adria Verdaguer : UX design
Miha Klasinc : Tech lead
Paul Witherden : UI Design
Einar Öberg : WebGL dev
Nick White : Development
Kenny Lindström : UI graphics
Anton Nylund : Development
9VOLT : Backend