Interactive mystery entertainment has become increasingly popular in recent years. Escape rooms, video games, and other forms of entertainment have legions of fans. Now, mystery devotees looking for something new can log into the streaming site Reveel and check out the interactive mystery series Reward. The first season in what will hopefully be many is called Dreamcrusher. As of this writing, only one episode has aired, but at least six others (the length of the season isn’t quite clear at present) will air roughly biweekly.
Created by Gavin Michael Booth, this series is not designed for passive viewers who want something on in the background while they’re playing on their phones. Viewers should pay close attention (the first episode is a little over fifteen minutes long), because there will be a quiz afterwards. Investigators can set up an account at rewardseries.tv and log in after every episode, where you’ll be asked to answer a few questions about the episode. There’s no reason why you can’t rewatch the episode as many times as you need to get the answers you need. Additionally, some questions call for searching for clues that may or may not be found in the real world (players living in certain cities might have an advantage!) but the answers can also be found on the Internet… somewhere. Several social media accounts on multiple platforms “belonging” to characters on the series have been created, and they’re presumably filled with clues and red herrings. When you see how few people have subscribed to them, it’s clear that many people haven’t come across them yet.
The more questions you answer, the more points you’ll earn, though your score will remain unknown until the end of play. The person with the highest score will win $100,000! This is both an incentive to watch and play Reward, and a barrier that will prevent the series from really taking off on social media platforms. With such a lucrative prize and only one winner, players are inclined to keep any discoveries that they may have made to themselves. Have you stumbled across the social media account belonging to a character in the show? Congratulations! But what incentive do you have to post about your discovery in the Reward’s Investigator Lounge? All your hours of searching before you finally tracked down the clue, and all it takes is for somebody to stumble across your Facebook post for them to gain instantly the points you worked so hard to earn?
This is why some rethinking of the prize awarding might be in order. Certainly the top investigator ought to receive a big prize, but mysteries go viral when the Internet hive mind joins forces as a team (consider all the places online where Arconians discuss each season of Only Murders in the Building!). Instead of individual players covetously hoarding every clue for themselves and hoping that as few players as possible stumble across an obscure social media post or clue buried somewhere in a rarely visited corner of the Internet, there has to be some way to get as many players as possible to be encouraged to share their discoveries and theories. Instead of hoping that other people get bored or frustrated, or wishing bad luck on others, if Reward: Dreamcrusher is going to take off, there needs to be a way to make it funand not frustrating to find some hidden clue, and to get thousands of strangers to want to work together. Instead of just earning points for answering questions based on watching the episode and scouring the Internet for clues, players could gain points for both quality and quantity of posts promoting the series and theories. Players or judges could vote or determine the best theory of the week, or musing on whether something’s a clue or a coincidence, and special prizes could be awarded for sportsmanship. As it is, players are essentially being encouraged to tell as few people as possible about the series so as to minimize the competition, and that’s no way to turn this into a viral sensation.
Having discussed the logistics of this game, it’s time to describe the series. Reward: Dreamcrusher centers around Gwyn, a rising pop starlet with a mysterious past and a shiny electric blue wig. Her autobiographical songs are filled with clues that may catch a killer, and the narrative promises to focus on the dark side of celebrity culture and the music industry. The first episode, “Frothy Like It’s Hot,” introduces Gwyn and at least seven other characters, and we gain tantalizing glimpses into Gwyn’s past, mental state, and personal struggles. The dialogue is a bit workmanlike, but that’s because virtually every exchange holds potentially relevant information. The first episode is clearly exposition, but it’s a good introduction to the characters, and by the end, it’s not even certain who the victim is. As the host of the series, Lindsay Ivan, notes, nothing should be taken for granted.
Reward: Dreamcrusher promises to be a lot of fun, and clearly a ton of thought, care, and ingenuity went into it, but I hope that some reworking of the prize plan can lead to this becoming a shared fun experience for as many people as possible, rather than an intense competition for a handful of rivals trying to hide their discoveries from each other.
Reward the Series: Dreamcrusher
Reveel
2025
