Secret Page
View the case- Brand
- Fornasetti
- Year
- 2015
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Fashion & Beauty
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- DVTK
Objective
Fornasetti wanted a way to let its ironic, playful side show through online, beyond the product catalogue. Milan agency POMO, which ran the brand's full digital presence, built it as a reward for curious visitors rather than a sales push — a bit of brand humor built around the house's signature Tema e Variazioni plates.
Solution
There's no link to this page anywhere on the site — you only find it by landing on a 404 or tripping a hidden trigger elsewhere on fornasetti.com. Get there, and you're dropped into a clay-pigeon shoot, except the clays are Fornasetti's own porcelain: plates are tossed across the screen and you fire to smash them mid-air. Each secret level swaps in a different plate design — the Butt Plate, the Skull Plate, the Owl Plate — so every round reveals a new pattern as it shatters. A session ends when the toss of plates runs out, and getting back in means hunting for the entrance all over again.
- 1
The game hides behind a fake dead end: it is not in fornasetti.com's navigation at all, and players only reach it by triggering a 404 or stumbling on an easter egg elsewhere on the site. The error screen itself doubles as the invitation, dressed in the Tema e Variazioni poodle wallpaper with a plate flying across it and a link reading PLAY THE GAME — AND HIT SOME FORNASETTI PLATES.
- 2
Clicking through drops the player straight into a full-screen ball-trap shooting gallery: the same wallpaper fills the screen, the cursor becomes a ringed crosshair, and there is no interface beyond a logo and a sound toggle. Fornasetti plates are launched into frame on arcing trajectories, and the player aims and clicks to shoot them out of the air; a hit shatters the plate into paper-white shards and pops up a point value that varies by plate.
- 3
A persistent HUD runs along the bottom of the screen throughout: current level on the left, running score in the center, and a hundredths-precision countdown timer on the right, since each round is played against the clock.
- 4
Each level swaps out both the backdrop pattern and the plate design, pairing a new Fornasetti motif — such as a wall of cats with plates bearing Lina Cavalieri's face — so progression is built level by level around different iconic illustrations.
- 5
Play can also break into a hidden layer: the screen fades to black with a SECRET LEVEL title card, dropping the wallpaper entirely for a run of bonus levels set against a bare black stage, identified only by crosshair and HUD. These include a Butt Plate level where hitting a special plate adds seconds to the clock, a Skull Plate level shot at skull-motif plates, and an Owl Plate level whose hits scatter feathers instead of shards — the secret levels are not locked into a fixed order.
- 6
When the timer runs out, the game closes on a bright end screen assembled from gold-edged plate shards, displaying the final score alongside a PLAY AGAIN link and a CHALLENGE YOUR FRIENDS option that shares the result to Facebook.
