News Archives/2016

Some times old news is still good news. All news archives from the Wiki will be kept here. The wiki news covers both what is happening with the game, but also changes that are being made here.

This page covers the news archives for 2015. See the News Archives/2014 page for older news.

October 2015

 * 31st October 2015: The Halloween 2015 Update has finally been released for Windows. This update also includes the non-timed challenge content from the Social Events Update since that update was not released on this platform i.e. the update adds the 3 Halloween timed challenges, 17 Halloween update collections; 16 Social Events Update collections; 101 Halloween Update Quests; 75 (out of original 105) Social Events Update Quests; the Banquet Hall and Spooky Yard pictures; and all other changes to the game made by either update.
 * 21st October 2015: The Halloween 2015 Update has been released for iOS mobile devices in the Apple App Store.
 * 16th October 2015: The Halloween Update has been released for Android devices in the Google Play Store.
 * 15th October 2015: The 2015 Halloween Update has been released in the Amazon App Store for Kindle Devices.

September 2015

 * 15th September 2015: 17 months after breaking into the top 5000 wikis, and 7 months after reaching the top 1000 wikis on the Wikia Activity Monitor (WAM) list, the Secret Society - Hidden Mystery wiki broke into the top 500 wikis hosted by wikia on the 15th September 2015, placing at number 498 with an ever improving WAM score of 87.93 (out of 100). This score also brings us into the top 250 wikis in the 'Games' vertical.
 * 15th September 2015: The Social Events Update has now been released for Kindle devices in the Amazon AppStore!
 * 14th September 2015: The Social Events Update has now been released for iOS devices in the Apple App Store! The Social Events update brings 3 new timed challenges; a new picture - Banquet Hall; 16 new collections and 105 new quests to the game.
 * 10th September 2015: A new update has been released for Android in the Google Play Store, introducing the Social Events Update!

August 2015

 * 16th August 2015: The Travel Time Update has been released for PCs in the Windows App Store. This version of the game has been optimised for Windows 10.
 * 11th August 2015: The Travel Time Update has been released for Kindles in the Amazon App Store.
 * 3rd August 2015: A patch has been released for the iOS version of the Travel Time Update in order to solve a freezing issue some players were experiencing. The patch (v. 1.14.5) is available in the Apple App Store Store.

July 2015

 * 31st July 2015: The latest community poll asked players about their favourite new feature of the Travel Time Update. 35% of voters cannot get the update yet, as it has not been installed on their device, hopefully that will be rectified soon. 23% think getting multiple charges on pictures and puzzles is the best change, while sorting in the collections tab (16%) and being able to see full energy at the top of your Home Desktop (8%) where also popular choices. Sorting and searching in of Friends list; being able to see exact number of Special Items in your inventory while playing; and having visiting points restored to 50 experience points per charge all received 4% of votes. The Timed Challenge Quests themselves and other new quests added to the game received no votes, although the Observation Deck picture itself did receive 6% of votes.
 * 29th July 2015: A patch has been released for the Android version of the Travel Time Update in order to solve a freezing issue some players were experiencing. The patch (v. 1.14.5) is available in the Google Play Store.
 * 29th July 2015: Mytona, the makers of The Secret Society - Hidden Mystery, have announced the worldwide release of their new hidden object game: 'Seeker's Notes: Mysteries of Darkwood' for iOS devices. You can watch the trailer for the game here. The game had been available in the Canadian apple appstore since April, but now Seeker's from around the world can join the adventure. An Android version of the game is expected to be released soon in the Google Play Store.
 * 23rd July 2015: The latest community poll asked players which Artefacts they would buy if they could buy them. The Symbol of Success (+50% chances of winning items for 24hrs) proved the most popular choice with 32% of the votes. The Magister's Amulet (+80% experience points for 24hrs) and Amulet of Santa (-20% special items per play for 24hrs) were also popular choices, getting 15% and 9% of the votes. 30% of voters would buy all of the Artefacts if given a chance, whereas 5% would not buy any of them. Interestingly, no one would buy the Valentine's Amulet, which decreases the energy needed to play pictures/puzzles by 10% for 12hrs but 7% of voters would buy the Witch's Talisman, which increases the rate of energy restoration by 3 times for 24 hours. Using the Witch's Talisman would give a player an extra 960 energy points in a day, which is the amount of energy that could be saved playing Flower Shop 93 times using a Valentines Amulet, which at a rate of 3 minutes per game would only take 4.5 hours of the time it was activated for.
 * 14th July 2015: The Travel Time Update has been released for Android devices in the Google Play store!
 * 13th July 2015: A new update has been released for iOS devices - introducing the Travel Time Update!
 * 1st July 2015: The latest community poll asked players when they like to play the game. 86% of voters play every day of the week. 12% only play on weekdays, while only 2% only play on weekends. Evenings are the most popular time to play, with 50% of voters doing most of their playing at this time. 13% of voters play in the mornings, while another 13% play late at night. 14% of voters play all day long.

June 2015

 * 25th June 2015: Last week's community poll looked at how long people spend playing the game each day. The majority of voters (57%) spend between 45 minutes and 2 hours playing the game each day. Only 17% of voters spend less time than that playing, but even they dedicated 20 minutes or more to the game each day. 10% of voters will play for 2-3 hours and 6% will play for 3-4 hours. 10% of voters will play even longer than 4 hours, with half of those playing 4-7 hours a day and the other half playing an indescribable amount of time (>8 hours).
 * 15th June 2015: Last week's community poll asked players which anomaly is their favourite. The winner is Mystic Smoke, which received 44% of votes. Scroll-eater (26%) and Ghostly Mirror (21%) were also popular choices. Lost Time came in last place, with only 9% of votes.
 * 8th June 2015: Last week's community poll asked about peoples playing habits when it comes to anomalies. The overwhelming majority (56%) of voters do not take anomalies into account when playing, and just continue with their normal strategy when they appear. 29% of voters will banish anomalies straight away if they can, while only 4% will play them straight away if they can. 11% of voters will instead leave anomalies in pictures until they either need to play the picture or have a quest that needs that anomaly. Those that like to banish straight away are more likely to play the anomaly than wait for the right banishing item if they do currently not have it. Those that like to play the anomalies straight away are more likely to wait than banish the anomaly if they do not have enough energy to play straight away.
 * 4th June 2015: A patch has been released for the iOS version of the Spring 2015 Update. Version 1.13.5 is available in the Apple App Store. This is not a new content update, but may have technical improvements for players who are experiencing problems with the game.

May 2015

 * 29th May 2015: This week's community poll rated the current puzzles available in the game. Gem Match was the resounding favourite, receiving 58% of votes. The second most popular puzzle is Pipes, with 22% of votes. Blocks and Memory Match tie for last place, each receiving 10% of votes.
 * 20th May 2015: This week's community poll asked about what game level players currently are. The majority of the community are under level 200, with 40% of voters currently between Level 1 and Level 100, while 34% of voters are between Level 101 and Level 200. Of the voters on higher levels, 18% are between Level 200 and Level 300, while 7% are between Level 300 and Level 400. The highest range of Levels to receive a vote was the 401-450 range.
 * 19th May 2015: The Spring 2015 Update has finally been released for Mac computers in the Mac App Store! Mac computers are the last platform to receive the update, so now all players are able to play the new game content. This update includes a new picture, Flower Shop, as well as new quests and collections.
 * 13th May 2015: This week's community poll asked players whether they have updated to the new Spring 2015 Update or not. Overall, 82% of voters have updated their games, while 12% have not updated and 6% cannot update (no update available yet on Mac Computers). 100% of voters who play the game on a Windows computer have updated, and both Apple and Android users have a similarly high update rate with 94% of Apple voters and 90% of Android voters having updated. Kindle players are slightly less likely to have updated, with only 70% of Kindle voters having updated to date.
 * 6th May 2015: Last week's community poll asked players what device they are using to play the game. Those with long memories will know that this question was asked 7 months ago, back in September 2014. This time, twice as many votes were cast. Back in September, 47% of voters were using Apple products, but that majority has now dropped to 36% (35% tablets; 1% phones). There has also been a slight decrease in the number of voters using Kindles (down from 24% to 20%). Androids have seen the biggest increase in votes, up from 18% total to 32% (28% tablets; 4% phones). Although a similar number of players report playing on Windows computers now and in September, their market share has dropped from 17% to just 7% due to an increase in other platforms, including Mac computers which received no votes back in September but have 4% of votes this time around. There is also one voter using a mystery device this time ('other'), compared to none in September.
 * 5th May 2015: The Spring 2015 Update has been released for PC computers in the Windows App Store! This update includes a new picture, Flower Shop, as well as new quests and collections.
 * 2nd May 2015: The Spring 2015 Update has been released for Kindle devices in the Amazon App Store! This update includes a new picture, Flower Shop, as well as new quests and collections.

April 2015

 * 30th April 2015: The Spring 2015 Update has been released for Android devices in the Google Play Store! This update includes a new picture, Flower Shop, as well as new quests and collections.
 * 27th April 2015: Last week's community poll asked players about their favourite tools to use when playing puzzles. The majority of voters (69%) will use Time Machines in puzzles to add extra time rather than use Seeker's Eyes to reduce the difficulty of the puzzle. 16% of voters will use Seeker's Eyes when playing Blocks; 10% will use them when playing Gem Match; and only 4% will use them when playing Pipes. None of the voters use Seeker's Eyes when playing Memory Match. This could simply be because Memory Match is an easier puzzle to complete without help, or perhaps it is because the 3 seconds glimpse of the board a Seeker's Eye provides is not as beneficial as using the tool in other puzzles or pictures.
 * 20th April 2015: Last week's poll asked players about their favourite tools to use when playing pictures. Compasses are the most popular tools with 56% of the votes. Dynamite comes in second with 19%, and Seeker's Eyes are just behind in 3rd place with 13%. Surprisingly, Torches only got 7% of the votes, placing only narrowly ahead of Time Machines, which got 6%. Lanterns received no votes.
 * 13th April 2015: A new update has been released for iOS devices. The Spring 2015 Update includes a new picture, Flower Shop, as well as new quests and collections.
 * 13th April 2015: Last week's community poll asked what players are doing while waiting for a new update to the game. 51% of voters still have a lot to do in the game and are currently working through their quests. 18% of voters are working on increasing their picture levels, while 5% are doing the same for their puzzles. Only 1% are working on increasing an award to a new level, whilst 4% have created a new goal for themselves to keep busy. Quite a few players have ran out of things to do in the game itself, with 5% of voters only opening the game to gift and visit their friends and 16% of voters taking a break altogether from the game until the next update is released.
 * 7th April 2015: The latest community poll looked at how players use their Artefacts. Only 5% of voters never use Artefacts. Of those that do use them, 23% of voters rarely have artefacts to use; 38% of voters occasionally have them in their inventory; and 34% of voters always have a large stockpile on hand. 8% of voters will always use the atefacts they combine straight away, but the vast majority (87%) will save their Artefacts to use during special quests instead. Interestingly, it is those players with large stockpiles of Artefacts that are least likely to use them regularly, with 0% saying they use the stockpile outside special quests. 4% each of those who occasionally or rarely have artefacts will use them straight away.

March 2015

 * 22nd March 2015: 10 months after breaking into the top 5000 wikis on the Wikia Activity Monitor (WAM) list, the Secret Society - Hidden Mystery wiki has finally entered the top 1000, placing at number 997 with an ever improving WAM score of 77.11 (out of 100). This score also brings us into the top 500 wikis in the 'Games' vertical.
 * 20th March 2015: This week's community poll looked at Talismans. All voters say they use Talismans to some extent while playing, with 9% of voters rarely using them; 27% of voters occasionally using them; and a whopping 64% of voters always using them when they play. 25% of voters will always use the most powerful Talisman available to them, but the vast majority (75%) will save their most powerful Talismans up for special quests instead. The next poll is the same question, but this time looking at Artefacts.
 * 13th March 2015: This week's community poll asked about hiring friends. 19% of voters never Hire their friends when playing the game. Of those that do, the majority hire their friends occasionally (45% of all voters), while 20% of players hire the most friends possible each day and 16% rarely hire their friends.
 * 11th March 2015: The Secret Society Wiki is 1 year old today!!! It has certainly been a busy year, and we now boast 112 content pages chock full of information about the game (check out the newest addition here); over 4000 pages total (including talk pages, forum etc.); and over 1000 uploaded files. There has been 6,500 edits made to the wiki in it's first year, and we hope to build on this into to future. A huge thank you to all contributors, readers and curious players for helping to make our first year so successful, as this place would be nothing without you.
 * 6th March 2015: This week's community poll asked how many friends players have in their SS friends list. Over 90% of voters have 100 or fewer friends. 6% don't have any friends at all, 8% have 101-200 friends and only 2% have more than 200 friends. In the 1-100 group, players were quite evenly split, but the majority hover around the gifting limits (50 few gifts per day) in terms of number of friends they keep with 25% of players have 26-50 friends and 21% having 51-75 friends.

February 2015

 * 27th February 2015: The latest community poll looked at visiting habits. 23% of players never run out of strength points when visiting their friends, and only 3.5% of players say they never actually visit their friends. Of those that do visit but don't always have enough strength for everyone, players are split evenly between those that will use every charge available per friend until their strength points run out and those that will charge less per friend in order to visit more friends (36.8% each). The majority of players who visit, but don't have enough strength points for every friend every day, will alternate between starting their visiting at the beginning and end of their friends list (42%), but quite a few players will be careful to start their visiting where they finished the day before (21%). Only 11% of players will start on the same friend each day. So the next obvious question, is how big are these friends lists that players are so carefully managing?
 * 25th February 2015: The Christmas Update version of the game has finally been released for Mac players, giving them the missing content (Winter Street and Excavations pictures; new collections; new quests etc) and some glitch fixes.
 * (Friday the) 13th February 2015: Last week we saw that the 4 player professions are evenly distributed between players, but the question this week was if players could choose their profession would we see the same even distribution? The answer is a resounding no - most players would choose to be either a Sleuth (55%) or a Magician (32%), with Sages (9%) and Merchants (5%) proving very unpopular choices.
 * 11th February 2015: The Christmas Update version of the game has finally been released for Windows players, giving them the missing content (new pictures, collections etc).
 * 8th February 2015: The Facebook version of the game has been updated to Valentines 2015. The Valentines cards (given while visiting) are back....
 * 6th February 2015: This week's poll asked readers about their profession in the game. From the responses, it seems that the professions are very evenly distributed by the random assignment algorithm when new games are started. But in this small survey Sage's came out on top (36%), followed by Sleuths (25%), Magicians (22%) and finally Merchants (18%). Now that we know what everyone is, it will be interesting to see what people would like to be!

January 2015

 * 30th January 2015: This week's poll looked at the least popular pictures in the game. Crashed Plane was the resounding winner with 65% of the votes. Honourable mentions in the hall of shame go to Mayan Temple (5%) and Japanese House (4%). Misty Shed, Tree of Dates and Forest House also received multiple votes.
 * 29th January 2015: A patch has been released for iOS versions of the Christmas2014 Update, which contains minor bug fixes.
 * 23rd January 2015 again: Top10 Lists have been enabled across the wiki. These work a lot like the polls on the main pages except that they are permanent separate pages. Check out the Top10 (well.. 27) Favourite Pictures to get an idea how we could use them, and don't forget to vote for your favourite picture while you are there. This week's poll will ask the counter point - which is the most hated picture?
 * 23rd January 2015: This weeks poll asked readers how long they have been playing The Secret Society - Hidden Mystery. Players of all experiences responded, with nearly every option receiving a vote. 66% of players have been playing between 2 months and a year, but some players have been around for as long as 2 years (2%) and as little as a few days (9%). A very warm welcome to the newest players, and many happy returns to the veterans out there.
 * 16th January 2015: For this weeks poll we asked what would you like the next update's theme to be. 40% of voters decided they didn't actually want a themed update at all, just an update full of new content instead. Spring (20%) and Victorian Times (10%) were the most popular amongst those that did like the idea of another themed update. Despite a late surge in votes, the Zombie Apocalypse Update (5%) probably won't be winning any popularity contests any time soon. Pity! Of course this is just a community poll, and won't change the fact that we are most likely looking at a second Valentine's Day Update next.
 * 8th January 2015: Happy New Year to all SS players! The results of our last community poll of 2014 are in. We asked which of the new pictures was your favourite to play. 42% of voters think the newest holiday challenge picture, Winter Street, is the best. The last holiday challenge picture, Forest House, came in second with 22% of votes.

Related

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