Themed Thursday: Betrayal II

Are you an angel or a devil?(This is a follow-up from this site’s attempt two weeks ago of the previous prompt of Betrayal.)

You and your team are playing an adults-only exit game called Afterlife. It becomes clear, some of the way through, that two team members will have to split off from the rest of the team, one of whom is required to retrieve information from “Heaven”, the other from “Hell”. You ever-so-bravely volunteered to go to “Heaven”.

You opened a low door and made your along a short crawl-space barely a couple of feet high, then turned back on yourself for a second crawl-space on top of the first, then a third on the top of the second. This concept of going up felt in keeping with the traditional viewpoint of heaven being above, and the decor became more sky-like and the soundtrack more ethereal. At the top of the final crawlspathence, you made your way into a small, brightly lit, wonderfully bright white room.

So it turns out that “Heaven” has a big comfortable chair, with a table next to it, on top of which is a top-of-the-range coffee machine. A freshly-made cup of tea is pushed onto the table through a hidden door, along with two chocolate digestives. You look for your next challenge… and there is nothing to do but sit down.

It turns out there is a video screen in the wall – and as you sit down, a video starts to play. A handsome man and a beautiful lady, both elegantly dressed, sidle on from the sides, and start to take their jackets off. One of them blows a kiss and leaves… leaving you only your favourite sort of stripper to watch. (But how did they know? Were they tracking the motions of your pupils to see where you were looking?)

Your chosen stripper says “Hi there! Welcome to Heaven. Stay awhile. You’re in no rush to leave. Enjoy the tea, or the coffee, and the biscuits. Or perhaps you’d like something a little stronger?” You mutter “A lager would be nice”… a few seconds later, the video says “We’ll see what we can do. Just give us a few minutes.” Then the jacket comes off, and the stripper starts to undo the buttons of their shirt, one by one.

They say “So you’re here about a puzzle answer, right? The answer to the heaven puzzle… well, that’ll be with you in a moment. And here’s your drink.” The next thing through the hidden door is, indeed, a can of lager. You regret not naming a brand! The stripper then starts to talk through the puzzle you were facing, showing more and more beautifully tanned skin. You’re aware of the time limit, but the lager does look tempting – and so cold! – and there’s nothing else to do while you’re waiting for the answer to be given.

The stripper confirms everything you thought you knew about that last puzzle, while now having only a couple of garments on apart form underwear, then just before confirming the answer you’re missing, says “One more thing. Stay here. You can be more use to your team here than back in the room, because if you stay here, I’ll tell you all about the puzzles that are coming up and how to solve them. And if you stay here for just two more minutes, you’ll get some cold, hard cash to take away with you. The answer you’re after is seventeen.”

You hadn’t seen someone stripping while explaining puzzles before, but you have now, and it’s remarkable how good they are at both halves of it. The stripper directs you to a box on the wall… and suddenly a stream of coins falls out of it. They fall into another box below, which directs them back out of the room, but you can catch them as they stream. Sure, they’re only 5ps and 10ps, but a double handful of them adds up, and you wonder just how much you can stuff in your pockets.

So you’re in an exit game, and there’s this person you can’t take your eyes off, but you have some lovely drinks to drink and biscuits, and someone’s pushed a very cute-looking cake through to enjoy as well, and you’re getting the answers to the puzzles so your team will be really happy with you when you get back to them and it’s all confusing and overwhelming but in a good sort of way and… er, would you look at that.

OK. Now you know how to solve the next three puzzles and they sound like really good puzzles and you’re looking forward to getting back and solving them, but if you just wait for three more minutes and learn the answers to the last puzzle then you’ll get a T-shirt to keep as well as everything else. And the stripper… well, that doesn’t leave much to the imagination, does it?

Well, this wasn’t how you expected this game to turn out. The stripper has put on quite a show, and you’ve had a lovely little snack, and got a handful of cash, and a voice asked you your shirt size, and a couple of minutes later a bag came into the room with a shirt in your size.

And all the lights suddenly go from white to red. The stripper has gone. The mood has suddenly changed, and the angelic pan-pipes have been replaced with a loud, discordant buzz. What you can now see on the screen is… well, that looks like your team, and they seem to be going mad waiting for you.

“YOU GREEDY FOOL! FEEL LIKE WEARING THAT T-SHIRT? IT HAS A VERY INTERESTING MESSAGE:

I SCREWED OVER MY TEAM AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.

HERE’S THE VIDEO OF YOU WASTING TIME, EATING AND DRINKING. IF YOU DON’T WANT ME TO SHOW IT TO YOUR TEAM, DROP EVERYTHING – DON’T TAKE THE SHIRT, DON’T TAKE THE COINS, DON’T TAKE ANYTHING WITH YOU, LEAVE IT ALL BEHIND.

OH, AND ALL THE ANSWERS YOU’VE HEARD ARE WRONG.”

The Exit Game purity test

Are you an angel or a devil?This site doesn’t believe in taking April 1st as an excuse to try to make fools of its readers, but it’s a good day for whimsy. For instance, see last year’s satire on freemium gaming; happily everybody has had sufficient good taste for this not to come to pass, and fingers crossed that this remains so for many more years to come.

Instead, probably less tastefully, this site proposes an exit game purity test. Your purity score starts at 100% and drops by 1% for each of the following questions to which you can truthfully answer “Yes”. Technicalities count.

1. Have you ever been in a room with a door with a lock?
2. Have you ever unlocked a door?
3. Have you ever unlocked a door by grabbing the key with your teeth and turning it because both your hands were full with shopping bags that you didn’t want to put down on the ground?
4. Have you ever picked a lock?
5. Have you ever snapped a key clean in two in a lock then had to physically unscrew the lock from the door in order to sort it out?
6. Have you ever mocked a lock after cleaning its clock?
7. Have you mutilated more keys than Uri Geller?
8. Have you ever been outside a building with an exit game?
9. Have you ever got out of the rain by standing in the doorway to an exit game without actually going in?
10. Have you ever been inside a building with an exit game?
11. Have you ever been thrown out of a building with an exit game?
12. Have you ever played an exit game?
13. Have you ever played an exit game and won?
14. Have you ever played an exit game and lost?
15. Have you ever played an exit game and come up with a weird indeterminate sort of half-victory which the staff were not expecting?
16. Have you ever taken the consequences of losing an exit game wayyy too seriously?
17. Have you ever broken a record at an exit game?
18. Have you ever smuggled a vinyl disc into an exit game for the purpose of demonstrating your commitment to convoluted prop comedy?
19. Have you got a regular exit game team?
20. Have you got more than one exit game team?
21. Have you founded more than one exit game team just so your two teams can somehow feud with each other?
22. Have you travelled a hundred miles to play another exit game?
23. Have you travelled to another country to play an exit game?
24. Have you travelled to another country to play at least eight exit games in a single day?
25. Have you ever played an exit game while not knowing more than the barest essentials of the language of the country in which you were playing?
26. Have you ever cracked a code?
27. Have you ever been cracked by a code?
28. Have you ever asked a precocious child to set you a code to break and then been blown away by the complexity of what they have set?
29. Have you ever cheated at an exit game?
30. No, really. Have you ever cheated at an exit game, just a teeny weeny bit?
31. TECHNICALITIES COUNT. In your heart of hearts, you’ve got to admit that that one time, you did that thing that wasn’t completely kosher, didn’t you?
32. Have you ever cheated on an exit game, by playing it but thinking about playing another one while you were doing so?
33. Have you ever played two exit games at once?
34. “Yo, dawg. I heard you like exit games, so I put an exit game in your exit game so you can exit a game while you exit a game.” Have you ever played a digital exit game while playing a physical exit game?
35. Have you ever played an exit game with your significant other?
36. Have you ever played an exit game with your significant other and argued about it with them for hours afterwards?
37. Have you ever brought your cat, dog or other household pet with you to play an exit game because you want them to share the fun?
38. Have you ever dreamt of an exit game?
39. Have you ever dreamt of an exit game, then woken up in the morning, written the details down and worked out if they were at all practicable?
40. Have you ever been blindfolded in an exit game?
41. Have you ever been blindfolded in an exit game and enjoyed it a bit too much?
42. Have you ever been handcuffed in an exit game?
43. Have you ever been handcuffed in an exit game and chose not to remove the handcuffs when you probably should have done?
44. Have you ever taken advantage of an exit game which doesn’t have a camera to do something you probably shouldn’t have done in an exit game?
45. Have you ever taken advantage of an exit game which does have a camera to do something you really really probably shouldn’t have done in an exit game and the fact that there was a camera only made it better?
46. Have you ever been a gamesmaster for an exit game?
47. Have you ever designed your own exit game?
48. Have you ever run an exit game inside your own house for your friends?
49. Have you ever set yourself a one-hour time limit for a domestic chore and pretended you were playing an exit game in order to make it more interesting?
50. Have you ever bought something because you thought it would be a cool addition to the exit game that you’re planning to make some day?
51. Have you ever made an exit from an exit game through an exit that was not intended?
52. Have you ever left an exit game before the end because the fire alarm had gone off?
53. Have you ever realio, trulio, not-part-of-the-game-honest been locked into a building with an exit game?
54. Have you got an exit game costume?
55. Have you got an exit game costume that you like so much that you wear it when you’re not playing exit games to help you pretend that you are?
56. Have you ever gone commando when playing an exit game?
57. Have you ever played an exit game naked?
58. Have you ever been injured in an exit game?
59. Have you ever been properly physically injured in an exit game, not just suffering a bruised ego?
60. Have you ever learnt a famous code off by heart?
61. Have you ever held a conversation in Morse just to annoy those who don’t understand it?
62. Have you ever used a blacklight in an exit game?
63. Have you ever staged a miniature blacklight rave in an exit game?
64. Have you ever made it through a laser maze in an exit game?
65. Have you ever practiced capoiera, parkour or tai chi in the expectation of having to face a laser maze in an exit game?
66. Have you ever watched a movie and thought “mmm, this would make a great exit game”?
67. Have you ever spent money on an exit game that you really shouldn’t have done?
68. Have you ever playtested an exit game?
69. Have you ever picked up people you didn’t previously know for the express purpose of playing an exit game with them?
70. Have you ever seen a ghost while playing an exit game?
71. Have you ever pranked a teammate while playing an exit game?
72. Have you ever bitten a teammate while playing an exit game?
73. Have you ever had something in an exit game named after you?
74. Have you ever named a child making a deliberate reference to an exit game?
75. Have you ever had a first date at an exit game?
76. Have you ever gained a significant other through playing an exit game?
77. Have you ever opened a lock, a lock with someone, ever opened a lock, a lock with someone you shouldn’t have opened a lock with?
78. Have you ever traded sexual favours for information about an exit game?
79. Have you ever proposed marriage, been proposed to, got married or started your honeymoon at an exit game?
80. Have you ever broken up a relationship over an exit game?
81. Have you ever spoken about exit games in public?
82. Have you ever made academic study of exit games?
83. Have you made a career out of exit games?
84. Have you made a living out of exit games?
85. Have you made a living for other people out of exit games?
86. Have you got rich from exit games?
86. TRICK QUESTION! Nobody has got rich from exit games… yet. Have you ever gone broke from an exit game?
87. Have you ever badly mistimed your need for the bathroom due to being locked in an exit game?
88. Have you ever played the same exit game more than once?
89. Have you played so many exit games that the precise details of what was in each one blur into each other?
90. Have you ever pretended you were in an exit game when really you had just lost your keys?
91. Have you ever used being locked in an exit game as an excuse for not doing something, to someone who didn’t know you would still have been able to get out?
92. Have you ever used the phrase “exit game” as innuendo while fooling around?
93. Have you ever played an exit game on your own?
94. Have you ever fantasised a bit too hard about an exit game?
95. Have you ever used “whatever happens in an exit game stays in the exit game” as an excuse?
96. Have you ever had a game exit you?
97. Have you ever escaped from an exit game with a different team than the one you went in with?
98. Have you ever lied while taking this purity test to improve your score?
99. Have you ever used this purity test as a check-list of sources of inspiration, then done something with the intent to “improve” your score on this Purity Test?
100. Are you taking this test from within an exit game right now?

No names, no pack drill, and definitely no scores, but this site has specific reason to believe that in aggregate, the industry has a purity of between 6% and 14%.

Fiction: A Freemium Future

Comedy and Tragedy masksI’m not a fan of the principle of web sites lying to you on April 1st each year, but this does strike me as a good day for some overt satire. I trust we all have sufficiently good taste not to make this particular vision of a future happen.

“Welcome to SuperExit 3,000! We’re so glad you and your family could make it here. Now there’s three adults and two children in your party, right? That’ll be five people at our special introductory price: 99p each, so £4.95 for your first game. Yes, thank you, we do pride ourselves on our great value.

“Oh, you’re paying by credit card? Excellent, there’s a 20% discount for that, so that takes the price down to £3.96. If you don’t mind, what we’d like to do is to put an authorisation on your credit card. If you want any drinks or snacks, or if you want to play a second game, that’s great, we’ll just run one charge that covers everything at the end of your visit. Is that good? Good, good.

“Great, that’s all set! You’ve got everything you need to play the game. Now there’s one more thing: SuperExit 3,000 is a game that starts in person but, if you want it to, continues online. We’ll put your details on the site once you’ve finished today. Now, while you don’t need to, you might want to buy some credits. They’re mostly used for the web site: extra content, customise your avatars, that sort of thing. You don’t need them to play and enjoy the game, but some people find them fun. Buy them now and we’ll give you a special rate: just £29.99 for your first fifty credits. No? No, that’s fine. You don’t need them. If you want them later, you can buy them then.

“OK, all set. You’ve got one hour. Get in, solve the puzzles, find the gem and get out in time. In you go!

“Great work, guys! That’s your first three puzzles solved! That means you’ve got a score of 210… *fanfare* …and you’re up to level two!

“Keep going, team; you’re doing really well! You’re up to a score of 420, which puts you very, very close to level three, which will unlock the next room!

“You’re doing so well! You’re now up to 460… with that key, 470! Just thirty more points to get to make it to level three! It gets harder now…

“480! 485! (…) Good solving, you’re up to 488! You’re almost there! Now, just to let you know, you can buy a diamond boost, which will give you double points for the next five minutes. That would be bound to get you to five hundred and level three. The cost is just ten credits.

“Yes, of course you can buy credits while you’re in the game. Ten credits will cost you just £19.95. Shall we charge that to your card? Good, good.

“Really well done! That diamond boost worked brilliantly! Those last two puzzles have brought your score up to 910! *fanfare* You’re level three, team, go up the ladder and use the code on the safe door to go through the porthole. You’re almost at the gem, and you’ve still got fifteen minutes to go!

“Now it gets harder, but you’re almost there! Keep searching and solving, searching and solving, look high and low…

“*alarm siren blares* Oh no, you shouldn’t have opened that window, you’ve triggered a trap. Quick! Quick! They’re coming for you now, and if they catch you, you’ll never find the gem in time. We can call in an expert, though, at a cost of twenty credits.

“Yep, you can buy twenty credits, it’ll only cost thir – yeah, what your kids said. OK, great! *alarm siren stops* Now keep solving! Just six minutes left, but you’re almost there!

“Wow, you’ve activated the portal, with just three minutes to go. You’re doing so well! You’ve got just four puzzles left between you and level four which is sure to get you the gem! Be fast, but you can do it!

“Uh-oh, that wasn’t the right key. Watch the clock… look, using that key has sped it up. Two minutes, one minute, thirty seconds… it’s going so fast, but you can still do it, you can still find the gem! Want to buy some extra time? It’ll cost you three special red stars for another five minutes, the price is… OK, great, you’ve got it, and just in time. Five minutes and three seconds to go, and just four puzzles left!

“Wow, twenty seconds to go, you’ve made it to level four, and the cage has opened with the gem inside! Get the net and stretch up for it! The net? …quick, the vending machine, just five… OK, you’re good, now reach… WELL DONE, YOU’VE GOT IT, WITH ONLY TWO SECONDS LEFT!

“Wasn’t that brilliant? That was the closest game I’ve had all week, you were tremendous. And that was just phase one. Now you can get out in glory with the gem, or you can gamble it all on phase two. Phase two is just ten more minutes; solve the mystery and get the gem to glow again, and you’ll get up to level five… but as today’s day has a letter “a” in the name, there’s the special bonus that would get you up to level six. Level six is really cool, it gets you into the Level Six Club, that gets you your picture on the web site, with your names glowing and very special titles. It also gets you all the cola you can drink once you’re out of there! What do you say, kids?

“Phase two is really exciting, it is a gamble, but I promise it’s worth it. It’s different to the way phase one was, there’s just one convenient all-in charge that covers everything. With two seconds left, and your bonus, and your discount… let me see… £34.95, all-in, nothing more to add. Yes, that’s each, no surcharges. Come on, kids, what do you think your Dad should say?

“What’s that? You need the toilet? Well, you are in a locked room with the very cool almighty gem, but we can make an exception this one time and let you out to visit the little boy’s room. There’s just one tiny charge…”