Play Hard
View the case- Brand
- Red Bull
- Year
- 2020
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Puzzle
- Platform
- Social
- Agency
- Priska
Objective
Red Bull treats gaming culture as core territory it wants to own outright, not sponsor secondhand, so it built its own entertainment format for that audience rather than backing someone else's title. The goal was to give gamers a reason to spend time on a Red Bull-owned platform, test their knowledge against each other, and pass the challenge around their communities. Reviving the PopCorn format for games (after cinema and TV editions) was a deliberate way to pull every generation of gamer into the same room, and the later Gotaga Edition repeated the trick to plug into one French streamer's fanbase directly.
Solution
You land in a single illustrated scene of a gamer's bedroom, packed with posters, game boxes and props, and pan and zoom around it on desktop or phone to spot the details. Whenever you recognize a reference — anything from retro classics to Minecraft, Crash Bandicoot or The Sims — you click the spot and type the game's name; correct answers score points (harder finds pay more), wrong guesses cost points and a life, and a third mistake ends the run. Along the way a radar marks what you've already found, random bonus multipliers boost your score, and six quizzes unlock as you progress. Finish strong and you can register to land on the global leaderboard, but there's no answer key shown afterward — the board just resets, nudging you straight into another attempt.
- 1
The game opens directly in the browser from the Red Bull project page and plays on desktop, tablet, or phone; creating an account is only required for players who want to appear on the leaderboard.
- 2
Players are dropped into a single illustrated gamer-room scene that they can pan and zoom to examine posters, shelves, boxes, and other details.
- 3
The objective is to spot 66 references to video games hidden throughout the room, spanning old-school titles to modern hits like Minecraft, Crash Bandicoot, The Sims, Angry Birds, and Doom.
- 4
Players click a spot in the scene and type the name of the game they recognize there; correct answers score points that scale with how hidden the reference is, while wrong answers deduct points and cost one of three lives.
- 5
Losing all three lives ends the run and forces the player to restart from scratch.
- 6
A radar tool highlights references already found so players avoid guessing the same spot twice.
- 7
Random score-multiplier bonuses appear during play, and six separate quizzes let players earn extra points on top of what they score from finding objects.
- 8
The screen continuously shows a "found X of 66" counter alongside the running score.
- 9
When a run ends, the score is compared against a global leaderboard, which requires registration to compete for top spots, but the game resets without letting players review which references they found.
- 10
A separate Gotaga Edition reskins the same search-and-name mechanic around French streamer Gotaga, again hiding 66 gaming references in his themed room.
