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Emerald City Game turns a classic Oz journey into a tactile puzzle adventure from the creators of Dizzy.
A Storybook Adventure With No Screen
Some adventures need a console, a television, and a suspiciously short cable. Journey to the Emerald City takes a different route: it packs its world into a book, a deck of cards, puzzles, and a few clever physical surprises.
Created by brothers Philip and Andrew Oliver—the twin designers behind the long-running Dizzy series—the project sends players from Kansas into the Land of Oz. This time, though, the player takes Dorothy’s role directly. Rather than simply reading about her journey, you’ll make choices, investigate clues, crack codes, and gradually work out the safest route toward the Emerald City.
The adventure is designed to work for one player or a group. That flexibility suits the material nicely. Oz has always been a place for solitary wonder and shared storytelling, whether you’re reading beneath a blanket or arguing over which suspicious-looking path to take next.
The central component is an illustrated interactive book. As the story unfolds, it points players toward objects included in the box, turning the reading experience into something closer to a tabletop mystery. You won’t just turn pages and wait for the next paragraph. You’ll need to pay attention, remember details, and occasionally wonder whether the answer was sitting in front of you all along.
That combination immediately brings back the best kind of old-school computer adventure: poke around, try something unexpected, and feel a small jolt of triumph when two unrelated clues finally click together.
A Deck of Cards, a Cipher Wheel, and a Sealed Map
The box is built around interaction rather than decoration. The included deck contains 52 cards, and players will use it to locate characters, uncover evidence, and follow leads connected to the story.
The cards aren’t limited to ordinary playing-card functions, either. They use traditional suits alongside additional symbols, giving the deck a second identity as both a game component and a standalone object. That’s a smart bit of design. Instead of creating a component that becomes useless once the adventure ends, the Olivers have given the cards a life beyond the main narrative.
The journey also calls for messages to be decoded with a special disc. There’s a satisfying physicality to that idea. A screen can reveal a cipher with a click, but turning a real decoder in your hands makes the solution feel earned, even when the underlying puzzle is fairly simple.
At another point, the book instructs players to break the seal on a double-sided map of Oz. Its reverse side contains a large poster, so the map serves both as an adventure tool and as a piece of display material once the journey is complete.
The first edition also includes several extras:
- A puzzle collection
- A pencil for working through clues
- Stickers
- A bookmark
- The 52-card deck
- The interactive adventure book
- The sealed, double-sided map of Oz
The exact balance between reading, deduction, and physical manipulation is still a little uncertain from the campaign materials. Some elements are clearly presented as prototypes, while others appear closer to final production. I’m not entirely sure how smoothly every component will connect until the finished version is in players’ hands, but the intended structure is easy to understand.
More Than a One-Time Adventure
The most appealing feature may arrive after the main story is finished. The Olivers have planned at least 12 additional games using the card deck.
That gives the box more staying power than a typical puzzle book. Once the route to the Emerald City is complete, the cards can supposedly be shuffled into other formats and used for fresh play. This is especially welcome in a genre where the central mystery can often be solved only once. The adventure may have a final answer, but the deck is meant to keep doing some work afterward.
The packaging is part of the presentation, too. The box is roughly the size of a case for a DVD or an old computer game, which feels entirely appropriate for a project built around retro-game instincts. It is designed to open under its own weight, in a manner compared with the smooth lift of premium phone packaging.
Just as importantly, the box is intended to avoid plastic. That gives the physical edition a cleaner feel before anyone even opens it. The goal is for the package to look good on a shelf, rather than resembling a pile of disposable inserts that immediately gets moved into a drawer.
My first reaction was that this might be a charming book with a few props attached. The more details emerged, the less fair that impression seemed. The cards, decoder, sealed map, poster, and additional games suggest a deliberately layered object—part book, part puzzle kit, and part tabletop deck.
A Video Game Without the Screen
The Olivers describe Journey to the Emerald City as the first release in their Active Brain Games series. Their shorthand for the concept is particularly clear: a video game with the screen removed.
That description explains the design philosophy. The project aims to preserve several familiar pleasures from adventure games:
- Exploring an unfamiliar world
- Searching for useful objects
- Solving puzzles
- Following clues
- Making decisions
- Experiencing the satisfaction of uncovering something new
The major difference is that the player handles the evidence physically. There’s no inventory menu, no blinking cursor, and no character waiting beside a locked door while you try every item in your possession. The book becomes the world, the cards become the objects and characters, and the player’s table becomes something resembling an adventure-game interface.
That concept also draws on the Olivers’ long experience with games. They are attempting to transfer decades of exploration, puzzle-solving, and discovery into printed form—everything except the programming itself.
It’s an attractive idea, although the comparison has limits. A video game can react instantly to a player’s actions, while a book must anticipate possible choices through its structure. That may make the experience more deliberate, but it can also produce moments where players wonder whether they missed a tiny instruction. For some people, that feeling is part of the fun. For others, it’s where the pencil starts tapping impatiently on the table.
Back to Baum’s Oz
The project doesn’t draw from the famous 1939 movie adaptation. It also isn’t based on the later retelling associated with Alexander Volkov. Instead, the Olivers are using L. Frank Baum’s original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, along with illustrations by William Denslow.
That choice matters. Baum and Denslow’s Oz has a distinct visual and literary identity, and it isn’t simply the same world seen through the movie’s familiar color palette. Returning to the original material gives the game room to develop its own look rather than recreating images everyone has already seen countless times.
The Olivers have visited this particular Oz before while working on Wonderful Dizzy, so the setting isn’t entirely new territory for them. They know how to translate that strange mixture of danger, whimsy, and slightly offbeat fantasy into a game-shaped experience.
Still, the visual presentation shown so far is somewhat mixed. The campaign materials combine prototypes, production mockups, and illustrations whose final status isn’t always obvious. The brothers have said they plan to show pre-production samples during the funding period, which should make the finished direction easier to judge.
They have also acknowledged that neural-network tools will be used for some illustrations. That won’t bother everyone, but it does introduce a question about artistic consistency. The original book’s Denslow illustrations have a recognizable character, and a modern project inspired by them needs to be careful not to look like several different visual ideas were placed in the same box.
Where Dizzy Fits In
The connection to Dizzy is one of the project’s obvious selling points, but the actual crossover is surprisingly modest.
The basic edition of Journey to the Emerald City does not include Dizzy as an active character or game mechanic. Instead, every box is promised to contain a small Dizzy badge. There is also a collector’s Dizzy edition with a signed copy and an A3 poster featuring Fantasy World Dizzy.
That’s a pleasant extra, but it feels thinner than the wording might suggest. A badge is nice; it is also the sort of object that can disappear into a drawer before the box has fully found its place on the shelf. I had initially expected the Dizzy connection to be woven into the adventure itself, perhaps through a character, a reference, or a bonus puzzle. It turns out to be more of a collector’s nod than a genuine part of the game.
That’s a missed opportunity. The Olivers have already shown that Dizzy and Oz can share a visual neighborhood, so a small in-game connection could have made the special edition feel much more substantial.
Campaign Editions and Funding
The available campaign tiers are straightforward:
- £18 — early edition, limited to 200 copies
- £22 — standard edition
- £30 — signed edition, limited to 100 copies
- £50 — special Dizzy edition with poster and signature, limited to 200 copies
- £100 — six standard editions at a discounted bundle price
The funding target is £5,000, a restrained amount for a physical project containing a book, cards, printed puzzles, packaging, and multiple extras. At the time of the campaign update, more than £1,500 had already been pledged within the first few hours.
The campaign presentation also appears more carefully prepared than some earlier efforts from the same creators. The project explains what belongs in the box, separates the editions clearly, and gives potential backers a better sense of how the components are meant to work together.
Whether the final product can match the charm of the concept remains the key question. The ingredients are promising, but tabletop adventures live or die by details: the quality of the printing, the clarity of the instructions, the logic of the puzzles, and whether the physical pieces feel satisfying rather than ornamental.
Conclusion
Journey to the Emerald City has the makings of a lovely low-tech adventure: a classic fantasy setting, a tactile puzzle structure, reusable cards, and the unmistakable fingerprints of designers who understand exploration. Its modest Dizzy connection is disappointing, and the unfinished visual materials leave a few questions hanging, but the core idea is stronger than a simple novelty product.
Would you rather play an adventure that lives on a screen, or one that spreads across the table with cards, clues, and a map waiting to be opened?
FAQ
- What is Journey to the Emerald City?
It is an interactive tabletop adventure based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Players read through the story, make decisions, solve puzzles, and follow clues toward the Emerald City. - Can the adventure be played alone?
Yes. The game is designed for solo play as well as group sessions. - What components are included?
The planned box includes an interactive book, a 52-card deck, a cipher disc, a sealed double-sided map, a puzzle collection, pencil, stickers, and a bookmark. - What is Active Brain Games?
It is the series name for the Olivers’ planned line of screen-free adventures that recreate elements of video-game exploration and puzzle-solving with physical materials. - Does the game feature Dizzy?
Dizzy is not directly included in the main adventure. The planned bonus is a small Dizzy badge in every edition, while a special edition adds a signed copy and an A3 Fantasy World Dizzy poster.
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