There are a lot of things I’ve missed in Brighton through laziness, shyness or just not knowing how to say “yes, and!” to opportunities: magazines I should have tried writing for, famous people I never met, urbex adventures, the Church of the Subgenius etc… But the thing I most regret is never playing The Brighton Game.
The Brighton Game was a weird mix of treasure hunt and I-spy book. When you joined, you were sent a catalogue of missions. These ranged from simple (“gamble £5 on the pier”) to difficult (“be photographed in the mayor’s chain”) to the dubious (“barbecue a seagull”). You wrote in to the game-master with proof of any tasks that you’d completed and every six weeks you were sent a newsletter containing the latest scores, other player’s responses and new missions.
The game apparently started in 1991, and a lot of Brighton’s weirdness in the 90s can be traced back to it. Playing wasn’t cheap but, really, I should have found the money. I don’t know exactly the details of how it ended but I know that it wasn’t good, involving a viking burial near Saltdean that got the authorities involved. The players and the organisers kept a low profile after that. You occasionally find traces of the game – I saw an update letter for sale in a junk shop; and someone once showed me the rulebook, but said it was too precious for me to take it away to photocopy.
I am sad I never got to play The Brighton Game. But now I have the the tools and technical skill to build something similar for myself online. So, I present: Keep Brighton Weird. It’s a web version of the what I imagine the game is like, with some basic ideas inspired by articles I’ve read about San Francisco’s SFZero. It’s currently in alpha (ie it’s playable but there may be bugs and things that need fixing). I also need to write many more missions, so let me know if you have any suggestions. The name Keep Brighton Weird was inspired by the Keep Portland/Austin Weird campaigns (I wrote about the Keep Brighton Weird slogan back in 2015).
And, if anyone reading this knows where I can get hold of any original mission catalogues, I’d love to include those in the game. But I’ll probably miss out using the challenges that caused so much trouble first time around.