Infinity Ring (lost episodic browser-based game based on James Dashner sci-fi novel series; 2012)

Logo for the book series.

Status: Lost

"FIX THE PAST. SAVE THE FUTURE." -The game's tagline

In 2012, the "Infinity Ring" novel series by James Dashner was published for the first time under the Scholastic brand with the first book in the series: "A Mutiny in Time". Before the book series debuted for the first time on August 28th, 2012, Scholastic also announced plans to make an episodic browser-based Infinity Ring web game which released alongside the release of the first book. The game was made available on the Infinity Ring website and as new entries in the book series released, new episodes were added to the game, with 8 episodes in total, with only one of them being a training segment. Each episode of the game would also get iPhone and iPad releases simultaneously. The game and website went down sometime in 2018, and the iOS releases were also removed from the App Store as well, making the game lost.

Story

In 336 BC, the secret organization known as the Hystorians was founded by Aristotle. The SQ has become more powerful than ever, and has been travelling back in time and have been destroying history as we know it, forming the thing now known by modern-day Hystorians as "The Great Breaks in History", the moments where history went off course due to the SQ's actions. These breaks start to tear the fabric of reality apart and causing natural disasters to rip and tear apart the very soul of what we know as Earth. These members of the Hystorians believe that the cataclysm is coming, maybe sooner than they originally thought. In order to set things right, Dak, Sera, and Riq travel back in time to certain time periods to fix these great breaks and to save the future of humanity as they knew it.

Gameplay/Premise

The game is split up into different episodes based on each entry of the book series. Each episode required you to perform certain tasks to progress in that specific episode's storyline. Each episode is based on a different period of history and directly ties into the corresponding book. At a certain point in each episode, the game asks for a code. The only way you were able to get these codes to unlock the rest of the episode was to look in the corresponding Infinity Ring book that the episode is based on. Once the code is acquired, you would enter it into the game, and then you would gain access to the rest of the episode. You could choose to play as Dak, Sera, or Riq (the main characters of the book series), and the story only properly made sense if you had fully read the corresponding book.

Episodes

The summary of each mainline episode (besides the training episode) is provided below:

Chapter One: The King of Diamonds (Based on Book One: A Mutiny in Time) - The SQ travels to Paris, France in the year 1792 to steal the crown jewels, and crush the French Revolution. The goal of this chapter is to prevent the SQ from stealing these jewels.

Chapter Two: Revenge of the Redcoats (Based on Book Two: Divide and Conquer) - Enemy troops from England want to kidnap the First Lady. You travel to Washington, DC in the 1700s just as the city is about to be set on fire by these SQ redcoats. The goal is to help Dolley Madison and Hystorian Paul Jennings save valuable artifacts before the entire city gets engulfed in flames.

Chapter Three: The Way of the Warrior (Based on Book Three: The Trap Door) - SQ ninja assassins arrive in feudal Japan in the early 1600s. The kids travel here to save soon-to-be shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu from these dangerous ninja assassins by putting their own lives on the line. To protect Tokugawa from these ninjas, you must learn and master the art of samurai combat in time for the final showdown.

Chapter Four: Sleeping Dragon (Based on Book Four: Curse of the Ancients) - The SQ plans to break through the Great Wall of China. It's the 1500s and an SQ branch of the Manchus tries to invade China and bring down the Ming Dynasty. But the only way the SQ can achieve that is if they break through the Great Wall of China. The goal of this chapter is to alert the Ming Dynasty of the threat and protect the Great Wall.

Chapter Five: The Lost Expedition (Based on Book Five: Cave of Wonders) - Lewis and Clark go missing and get captured by the SQ right on the verge of the two setting off on their journey across the Louisiana Territory. The goal is to trek through the dangers of the wilderness, survive the frontier, and track down Lewis and Clark before it is too late.

Chapter Six: Hidden Treasures (Based on Book Six: Behind Enemy Lines) - We go back to Paris, France for the second time, this time in the year 1790. The French Revolution begins to kick off, and the people of Paris want to create a place of art and culture that is open to all - the Louvre Museum. However, Queen Marie Antoinette begins to work with the SQ and steals some of the works of art required to create the museum, and has hidden them around the city. The goal is to infiltrate the Queen's clique, and find these works of art by travelling around Paris.

Chapter Seven: Code Red (Based on Book Seven: Iron Empire) - The SQ's leader, Lady in Red, has stolen the Infinity Ring technology and used its technology to create her own time travel device known as the Eternity Ring. With it, she can be anywhere at any time, and in Episode Seven, she aims for the Great Breaks in History. To save the world, you have to jump around time to revisit the moments where history was broken and went off course, and making sure the SQ leader isn't able to create utter chaos.

Gallery

Screenshot from Chapter One.
Screenshot from Chapter Two.
Screenshot from Chapter Three.
Screenshot from Chapter Four.
Screenshot from Chapter Six.
Screenshot from Chapter Seven.

Availability

The game and all of its episodes were available on the Infinity Ring website, with each new episode getting released when each entry in the book series was published. The game required the Unity Web Player to run, and you would've been prompted to install it if it was previously not installed. Sometime in 2018, Scholastic took down the official website for the book series a few years after the series came to a close. As such, all of the things relating to the Infinity Ring web game were taken down, and from that point on, redirected to a page on the Scholastic website summarizing the novel. None of the episodes were saved in the Wayback Machine, and no footage of any episode has been released apart from some screenshots of the game's episodes from the Infinity Ring Fandom wiki. With none of the episodes being archived, as of right now, it is 100% impossible to play any of the episodes as no backups exist for them. The game is considered fully lost and it may take a very long time before any of the episodes of this episodic browser-based web game are recovered, and if Scholastic has backups of the game, it is highly unlikely they will release these backups to the public and keep them locked away in the Scholastic archives.

Episode Tracker

#	Episode	Status
1	The King of Diamonds	Lost
2	Revenge of the Redcoats	Lost
3	The Way of the Warrior	Lost
4	Sleeping Dragon	Lost
5	The Lost Expedition	Lost
6	Hidden Treasures	Lost
7	Code Red	Lost
8	Hystorian Training	Lost

External Links