Rickstaverse
- Brand
- Rick And Morty
- Year
- 2015
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Adventure & Quest
- Platform
- Social
- Agency
- Adult Swim
Objective
Ahead of Rick and Morty's second-season premiere, Adult Swim needed to reignite its existing fanbase and pull in new viewers by meeting them inside a platform they already used every day, not another campaign microsite. The brief called for something that felt native to how people already behave on social apps, yet strange enough that fans and press would evangelize it on their own. Success was tracked in new followers, how deep people played, and how much buzz it generated around the show.
Solution
Rickstaverse turns Instagram itself into the game board: each account's photo grid is a piece of a map of a Rick and Morty world, and the player moves through it by tapping. Tapping a photo pulls up Instagram's native photo tags, and each tag works as a portal — following one warps the player to a different account, which becomes the next location in the story. Along the way, players pick up collectible items, one-off mini-comics, and exclusive clips from the new season stashed inside specific accounts. Some worlds hide choose-your-own-fate toys, where the player's taps decide what happens to a character. There's no fixed finish line — a session simply ends when the player stops warping, and new worlds keep unlocking as the season progresses.
Results
In its first week, Rickstaverse generated 28 million impressions and brought in more than 78,000 new followers, while average daily mentions of the show rose 142% (2.42x). A later expansion, released with no paid media behind it, still grew the account base to 88,300 followers, and total followers eventually passed 350,000. The campaign's promotional video drew more than 140,000 views.
- 1
The game opens on an Instagram hub account whose profile grid is not a feed but a single mosaic image — a map of a Rick and Morty world, station, or planet stitched together from dozens of individual posts.
- 2
The player taps one square of the grid to open its post, then taps the photo itself to surface Instagram's native photo tags overlaid on the image — these tags are hidden points of interest the player must spot within the scene.
- 3
Tapping a tag warps the player to a different linked account, dropping them into a new location's grid; the loop of scanning the mosaic, finding a tag, and warping repeats across a network of interconnected worlds.
- 4
Some tags lead not onward but to dead-end rewards: collectible items, readable mini-comics laid out across grid squares, and toy-like collectibles that let the player choose a character's activity and receive a branching video outcome.
- 5
A separate thread has the player find and follow a set of in-fiction "bootlegger" accounts, which reward followers with exclusive video clips not yet broadcast.
- 6
Some worlds sit off the obvious path and are reached only by manually working through tags rather than following signposted routes; players who lose their way can consult a dedicated illustrated help account for guidance.
- 7
The experience is built for Instagram's mobile app, since the tagging interaction behaves differently on desktop.
- 8
Later content drops extend the map from existing hub accounts, opening new branches, additional worlds, and a full mini-game reached through the expanded chain of posts.
