In September, 2020, players discovered an Instagram account by a University of Chicago librarian who was posting videos of strange events occurring at the Regenstein Library. Hidden within these videos were encoded messages from an “echo world” that was similar to our own, except for key divergences, including the lack of the COVID-19 pandemic. This echo world announced that in a month, a portal between our worlds would open, and that their world invited us to pass a series of challenges to determine whether we were ready to receive access to portal technology.

On September 29, ECHO fully began with an opening Spotify and Instagram based puzzle that unlocked the game and attracted approximately 4,000 unique views. On October 9, the Fourcasters welcomed 52 core teams to compete for three weeks by completing 88 quests including several video quests created by University of Chicago faculty. These quests were meant to prepare players for the ultimate test issued by the echo world. On October 30, the game concluded with a 90-minute live-streaming event that began with a collectively adjudicated interactive narrative format (a video-based “Choose Your Own Adventure” style narrative) that revealed a portal to another world. The portal split the audience of players into three separate rooms: a puzzle room, a story room, and a magic room. Players completed challenges in each room before returning to a space where they could compile what they had achieved and decide which character they wanted to send to the other world.