Hodag Snag
An eerie, one button game where you try to snag a clear photo of the mysterious creature known as the Hodag.
This bauble is created by Erik van Wees and Molly Heady-Carroll from Arcane Circus exclusively for crazyscarygames.com website. If you want to find out what kind of strange creatures lurk in the forest, stay down hidden in the bushes, wait patiently and be prepared to snap a super-quick photo. Can you make the perfect 'A' grade photo of Hodag?
One button game
Instructions for playing this game are rather trivial. You're a stationary observer hidden in the woods. While waiting for Hodag to show up, all kinds of birds are randomly flying by, moving in front of your camera. This waiting might make you a little bit nervous and cause you to prematurely press the shutter button. The photo which pops up in that case will probably get you an 'F' grade. Getting the perfect 'A' shot will probably take a lot of attempts, unless you get really lucky.
What do we know about Hodag?
Hodag is a fictional character, a kind of monster like Big Foot, 'invented' by a famous prankster Eugene Shepard back in 1893. He is the author of black-and-white photograph which clearly depicts a group of people, including himself, gathered around a creature which has never been seen before, with a head of a frog and back of a dinosaur. He finally admitted a hoax, but in the meantime the story was published in the newspapers and went viral. Most probably, Eugen just used and combined some stories which already existed and which were the product of imagination and superstition of early loggers. The creature you see in the photo was just a wooden puppet controlled by wires.
Today, Hodag is the official symbol of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodag]. It is very popular among local population. Hodag creeters are all over Rhinelander downtown, in souvenir shops and Hodag is even a high-school mascot.