announcements.

[vivariummods]

Hello, test subjects! Welcome to our first week of Vivarium, and thank you for joining! We have a few announcements for today, so please give this post a quick read.

✖ You may begin posting to the vivarium community. We have created tags for every character in the game, so please make sure that you tag your posts, whenever you create one or comment.

✖ We will be holding one AB Game every week, with our first one starting this Friday at 6PM EST. It will contain both the puzzle room and voting sections, and will be spanned over three OOC days and one IC day.

✖ We have decided that all characters will be given a "starter pack". This pack will be a simple drawstring bag, containing one water bottle, one loaf of bread, one can of baked beans (with an easy open end, so no need for a can opener), and a small pair of sewing scissors. This starter pack will be given after Calhoun finishes explaining the rules in this thread.
✖ This is a one-time, non-replaceable gift, so the food is suppose to last the character until they reach 9 BP to gain access to the cafeteria. As for the water bottles, they are easily refillable with the water fountain next to the cafeteria door. However, as of this time, the door leading to the cafeteria and water fountain is closed, and will open after our first AB Game. As for the sewing scissors? It's a little extra that Calhoun has thrown in, if anyone wants to start threatening/stabbing others for whatever reason. He thought people might appreciate it.

✖ Finally, we would like to hear your thoughts on how our first "puzzle room" has turned out, aka the Elevator. What did you think? Did you enjoy it? Were there some flaws you've noticed? What should we change for future puzzle rooms? Please let us know any thoughts you've had, whether positive or negative, so we know if it went in the right direction or not. Anonymous commenting has been enabled, so please do not be afraid to leave some negative feedback!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please use our mod contact page and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading!

Comments

[detectiveofthewest]

I liked the initial puzzle! The way the threads went was a lot more structured than I'm used to (e.g. not being able to move on to the next thread without finishing the previous one), but my tagging partner worked out well.

I was also worried about relying on the mods for answers about the environment, but they've been very responsive so far and the Google doc was quite helpful!

Are the puzzle room threads going to be unlocked at some point? Ema's shenanigans with the key and using Jake to plug the hatch sound like an entertaining read.

[blind_badass]

I also agree that having the google doc worked well for us to picture what was going on. Although the puzzle was a nice starter, I did actually have to sit down with a piece of paper and plot it out, which is what you want.

Having played both games, I was also surprised that what I thought might be coming wasn't QUITE what was going to happen. Which means you made it different enough for people who played the games to not be able to predict what's coming.

[vivariummods]

We will certainly be using Google Docs' spreadsheets for future rooms, so it's good to hear that they are well-received!

We also hope that it's a good thing that we have changed the first room in order to surprise players who have gone through both Zero Escape games. We've wanted something unpredictable so it didn't feel like we were just rehashing what the series has given us, and making it dull for players who were familiar with the games. We've wanted it to be fun and exciting (and especially new), so we hope that we have accomplished that!

[vivariummods]

We are glad to hear that you have enjoyed it! Thank you, and we hope that you will enjoy this week's rooms as well!

The Elevator posts will be unlocked, now that everyone has completed the puzzle, so we will unlock them in just a few minutes. As for future puzzle rooms, such as this Friday's, however, we will not be unlocking those rooms for a certain amount of time. We have specific reasons for this, and we will address this on Friday, when we put up the post. We hope that you will understand!

[puzzlinglad]

I fricken loved the puzzle, I think you guys put a lot thought into the whole thing and it was really fun to play out. Also being a solo was fun, I never felt like I was stuck doing something by myself, it was a magical friendship journey with cosplay mouse.

I also liked the difficulty level. I certainly don't mind tougher puzzles but this was a really good starting place I think, in game puzzles are always tough that way where you need to think of how much your character knows vs how much you as the player knows. Also the water was a great touch, 999 throwbacks are the best.

I have a question about food though actually, when someone reaches 9bp are they allowed to share food with someone who doesn't have it? Does each person have a certain amount of food they can take so they'd have to be careful about sharing it? I guess the same for water too.

[vivariummods]

We're happy that you've enjoyed it! We were worried that SOLOs might not enjoy themselves as much, so it's a relief to hear that cosplay mouse Calhoun has helped make things better.

We will certainly be throwing more 999/VLR references in the future, so please keep an eye out for them! Of course, nothing involves spoilers, but they will certainly be nods for those familiar with the series.

As for your question, you are not allowed to share food with someone who doesn't have 9BP. In fact, you can't even bring any food outside the cafeteria. If any character attempts to, it'll be a violation of the rules and Calhoun will get up in their case about it. It's not as serious of a rule such as breaking surveillance cameras or watches, so characters may attempt to do it; it'd just be very risky and they can face punishment for it. We will have a method for characters with less than 9BP to earn food, and we will let everyone know in the next announcement post (which will be next week)!

[skyentificmethod]

I too enjoyed the puzzle room. I thought the difficulty was appropriate for game introduction and I liked that it wasn't stolen completely from ZE (so I couldn't inadvertently cheat!) The gdoc helped a lot for visualizing the room without having to text dump or keep asking a bunch of runner questions. I also enjoyed having time to thread with my partner-- I imagine that as a solo it would've been a very different experience, which I find one of the appealing things of the game.

This was the first time I'd done a game with such a long time limit so that was a little different for me. For situations like this where people are playing fairly asynchronously, it might be easier in some ways to go on and get the rules or set-up text posted in just one or two comments instead of needing to thread out explanation? Just in case someone has only a small amount of time they can dedicate to playing and it doesn't overlap when the runner/partner can play. Alternately, if there's like a 'recommended time' to play, that could also be useful to know. ...I used to be a moontimer so I am always worried about scheduling stuff which I realise is probably a personal problem but... /o/

Anyway, enjoying things so far!!

[vivariummods]

Thank you for letting us know! It's good to hear that you have enjoyed it, and we hope that you will also enjoy our future puzzle rooms.

We also thank you for your suggestion, and we will make use of it for next week's AB Round. Unfortunately, we could not implement it for today's, but we will certainly set up all the information/explanation in one comment or two for next week's. We will then gain feedback from everyone, comparing the old way of sharing information with the new way, and see things from there.

As for the 'recommended time' to play, we unfortunately do not have a set time at this moment. Our schedules varies day-by-day, so we cannot give one now. Once we do have one, however, we will notify you and everyone else as soon as possible. We apologize for this!

[skyentificmethod]

Ah, maybe I was confusing about the game explanation thing; for example, today's game doesn't have any explanation, it's just jump in and play--which is great. I was more suggesting with relation to games or events that require more exposition, it could be useful to get that info necessary for playing up in a short number of comments in cases where folks don't have the time to thread it out in a timely manner, or in cases where the players don't have any reasonable reactions they can make (say, they're listening to a recording, they're locked up, etc). ...If that makes sense!! D: Sorry I am poor at descriptions, I don't think there needs to be a change to how things went today!

And yeah, gosh I am not trying to sound like timing nazi and it may totally be a non-issue! I just brought up the 'recommended time' (aka 'sup this is a time the runner will definitely be on) as a suggestion in case folks are having trouble synching up, but if that doesn't prove to be a problem then please don't sweat it!