Have you heard of a game called Hidden Chronicles? It is one of the many games produced by Zynga that can be played through Facebook. I’ve noticed that there is a little bit of genealogy sprinkled through this particular game. Genealogists might want to check it out when they have a few moments to spare.
Zynga is a company that makes a variety of online games. Some of them can be played on the Zynga website, and many can be played through Facebook. No matter which Zynga game you choose, there is one dynamic that is common to all of them. In order to advance in the game, you need to send requests to your friends for certain items. After you collect the right number of specific items, you become able to unlock the next part of the game.
There was a time when I swore that I was done with Zynga games forever, because I grew to hate having to ask my Facebook friends for stuff in order to get past a certain point in a game. Then, my uncle started playing Hidden Chronicles, and sent me a game request. The game involves finding objects that are hiding in a picture.
Right now, I am playing this game with my uncle and a few of my cousins. One could say that the game has encouraged some connections with a few of my living relatives. As I was playing, I noticed that the game also has some other genealogy related concepts built into it.
When you start the game, you are placed into the role of the niece or nephew of an uncle named Geoffrey Ramsey. He was called a “Guardian” because he had a special gift. People would bring him family heirlooms and he would see into the object’s past to learn more about it and also about whatever relative once owned it. He has mysteriously disappeared, and you need to do a bunch of quests to figure out what happened.
So far, I’ve come across a chain of quests that involve a locket. Molly has a locket from her grandmother. Her grandmother was named Regina, but seems to have once gone by the name Bessie. What happened? As you do the quests, you learn more about Molly’s grandmother, and her story.
Another series of quests involves John Macdonald, professor of literature and a distant relative of the famous author, Rudyard Kipling. He inherited a carved jasper bookend in the shape of a tiger, which once belonged to Kipling. He wants to know more about it. You find out more as you do the quests. When I started playing Hidden Chronicles, I had no idea that it included aspects of genealogy.
Image by Joop Dorresteijn on Flickr