Guest
You sit in your tiny 8x8 cell, listening to the tannoy announcement. The speaker system informs you that the overlords who keep you here - the treacherous Attrs - are running another 'Maze' for the enjoyment of the masses, and they have selected this year's “Rat“. As they read out the i.d. number of the citizen who will be partaking this year and you realise with rising horror that it is you... The Maze, even its name strikes fear into the sane - nightmarish garish corridors that you must be navigated to find 'The Games'. The Games themselves perversions of the ancient trials - here used to mock and humiliate the Rats as the cruel Attrs look on and 'score' the Rat's performance. Before you are dropped you into The Maze the announcement tells you to make this 'Rat-run' entertaining for the spectators - there should be no dawdling - and to play your hardest - the audience hates to be bored. You know that it is possible to end with a final score of zero points if you complete The Maze but take too long - you don't want that to happen - It's happened before, and nothing has been heard of those 'Rats' since. 'Good luck' the Attr guard says insincerely as he pulls you from your cell and pushes you through a door into the brightly lit maze... ...As your eyes become accustomed to the garish colours in front of you, you smile to yourself. You've got a secret. Within the tiny 8x8 holding cell there was a loose brick, behind which was a wrapped up bundle containing something that looked like a compass, and a piece of parchment. One side of the parchment seemed to contain a map of The Maze, and scrawled on the other were some hints, and instructions for using the compass: “Hello Rat, you are no doubt scared - but we can get through this... You're going to want to complete The Maze - which means scoring 10,000 points, then finding the exit. Scoring points is easy - find the BLACK PANELS in the maze, and play The Games behind them. There are four games, codename DGE, BMB, SNK, FLP. Each can only be played once, then the panel become white and is useless (though might help you navigate). When you've found and played all four games - four more Panels with be revealed. The first four games always start near to your starting place, so finding those ones shouldn't be too hard. If you do need help this is where your compass will help you - it's calibrated to show the directions of the walls The Maze - and when you're IN LINE WITH AN ACTIVE PANEL your border will show a stripe of the colour direction. You won't know how far away in the maze the panel is, but this should help you later on in the game. If you're really stuck you can USE THE MAP - this will show the locations of PANELS (both active or spent) and YOUR LOCATION, but each use will cost you 100 points at the end of the game. Oh, yes... EACH GAME YOU PLAY will also cost you 100 points at the end of the challenge too. So you'll want to play as few as possible to get to that magic 10,0000 points. When you get 10,000 points a special Panel will open, and all the others will become useless - head to that one to leave. You'll be scored depending how long you took to get to 10,000. A maximum of 10,000 would be available if you could somehow get to 10,000 points playing no games and taking no seconds with no use of the map. Obviously that's not possible, but try to score over 6000. Anything less than that is just embarrassing. And scoring no points at all is shameful - but very possible if you're not very good at The Games. To that end you can PRACTICE THE GAMES BEFORE YOU ENTER THE MAZE, if you're a bit of a wimp.“ The game was made by Uglifruit / Andy Jenkinson and released together with WOOT 2022. Download here:
