Connections to reality in an alternate reality game

New storyboard panel of our connections to reality
Today we made some exciting breakthroughs on our alternate reality game! I was becoming worried about where “reality” would actually work its way back into our story. Today I got my answer!
In second block, we started talking about the plot and all the students started playing ideas off each other. They came up with one of characters, Brooke, having a real map. It started as a map of a mall since she loves to shop, but moved to a map of New York since that is where she is from. This real map would mirror the island map and could be used to guide the characters into “balancing” the island so they can get off. We searched for maps of New York in second block and then also searched for real problems in New York that could mirror some of the problems that we had come up with for the island during our plot development work.
In third block we were continuing the work of second block. We decided that since Manhattan is an island that it might be good to have Manhattan Island mirror our “Lost” island. There is a nice symmetry to that, isn’t there?!?
They also did some searching for problems on Manhattan Island that could mirror our problems on the island. We put our connection ideas on a new panel of our storyboard (pictured above). I’m thinking we could link to those real news stories and real maps in order to keep the reality part of the alternate reality game. Exciting developments!