It was pretty obvious to me that the contest for April should have something to do with the
DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold release or be a complete participation failure. I would not even
attempt to pry you all away from the game right now. So the contest for April will take place in the game itself. It isn't necessary to have the full version of the game to participate. You won't need to spend more than a few hours altogether on our contest, and I suspect some people will only need a half hour. If you are good at the kinds of puzzles that appear in the newsprint section of
Games magazine, you'll probably enjoy this challenge. That's about all I can tell you without ruining the contest.
Part I - The Committal
All participants must declare themselves before
Local Time:04-18-2005 at 01:00 AM. Just post a reply to this message that says "
I'm in!"
or "
B0rsuk will participate, since he always does well at these things."
(if you were B0rsuk, of course) You could do it right now or anytime before the above deadline which is
negative 1022 weeks, 5 days away. It is a necessary step to participate in the contest.
There is no harm in backing out later if you want. So if you think you probably want to play, then just post your reply that indicates you are "
committing"
.
Members of the Caravel team may not participate in this contest. (Mike, Matt, Matt, Erik, Clayton, Neil, Eytan, Adam, Gerry)
Part II - The Revelations
Then put yourself in a state of readiness, for the clues will next be revealed at scheduled times. The moment you know the secret, e-mail me (erikh@caravelgames.com) with it. You can make multiple guesses, but any later guess will always replace your previous guess, even if the previous guess was right! So actually, you can only have one guess, since I will only use what you give me last.
This first clue, delivered at our peak traffic time, is very small, but it will start you thinking.
The secret is found inside of
DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold.
This second clue, delivered 12 hours later when people on the other half of world have sunlight, is more substantial.
The secret is not found while playing the game itself.
The third clue begins to narrow things down.
The secret is something that you see on the screen without doing anything special.
The fourth clue will have everyone focused on a single location.
The secret is shown in plain view on the title screen.
The fifth clue will be the last, but a great deal of cleverness will still be needed to proceed.
The secret is a message written on the border stones, which requires decoding.
I've tried to make the clues as fair as possible when considering that people will often be asleep or busy at something when one is revealed. However, I think it is entirely possible that nobody will learn the secret until sometime after the fifth clue. So please don't get upset if you aren't around when a clue is revealed--the contest will still be in your grasp.
During the period of
Revelations, no participant shall be allowed to speak of the following matters in public
or private:
* his progress in the contest--particularly, if he submitted a guess or made a discovery.
* any form of hints or clues.
* how hard or easy the participant judges the contest to be.
Disqualification would be the obvious penalty. You could ruin the entire contest by saying the wrong thing, so please be very careful. The one exception to speaking of the above is that you can always e-mail me and talk about it. If in doubt over whether you can say something related to the contest, ask me first.
Part III - The Reckoning
On
Local Time:04-25-2005 at 01:00 AM, no further guesses will be accepted and the
Reckoning will commence. Each participant who declared himself during the
Committal will be asked to post a brief description of his efforts in the contest. This will allow us to see who truly participated, assuming a certain level of honesty from those who make claims.
All who sent me a correct guess during the
Revelations will then be judged by the timeliness of their submission. The earliest will win first prize, 100 rank points and an item of his choosing from
the Prize Pile. Next in sequence will win 50 and 25 rank points for second and third place. All first-time contest participants will receive 10 rank points for trying something new.
Here is a small departure from the rewarding we've done for past contests. If you make a correct guess and follow all the other rules for participation, but aren't among the first three to submit correct guesses, you will still get 8 rank points for figuring out this difficult puzzle. So even if you think you are the last one working on it, keep going!
The Committal begins! Who is committing?
-Erik
[Edited by ErikH2000 at
Local Time:04-17-2005 at 10:37 PM]
____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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