So last night, Wednesday 25th October, was the much awaited Recedas Revenge 2. Everyone was hyped up and looking forward to the event. After my experience with the San Francisco online event, I wasn’t getting my hopes up.

Skenmy created this awesome link between the different servers that were going to be used for chat during the game, as the chat for Recedas Revenge was going to be insanely mad, and very difficult to keep up with. It meant that we could be on the Mind Candy IRC server, Chat-solutions IRC server, or the AppliedIRC server, and still talk to each other. It was really nicely done.

At around 6pm the website was updated with a link to the play webpage. I signed into the interface, and was pretty much dumbfounded with the shinyness. It was very cleverly done. It had a drawing pad at the top, which had an animation for Recedas Revenge 2. There were two rooms at the bottom. One to chat in, and the other was solely for the game itself.

Recedas Revenge 2 rules were as follows:

• Only one person could be in control of the game at any one time.
• You had to press the “Queue” button at the top if you wish to have a go, controlling the game.
• You had to navigate your way using text commands such as “move north” or “take lecks”
• You also had to draw where told to.

I think the most surprising moment for us was when a voice suddenly boomed: “Recedas Revenge 2: Coming Soon!” as we were waiting for the game to start. We all were startled, then we started guessing at who was the voice. I was the first to say it was Guy, and apparently I was right!

The actual game didn’t start until 6:40pm, which was 10minutes later than we expected. I was a little concerned about the game, as the chat included in the interface was completely mad, and I was having trouble keeping up. I decided to ignore the game chat, and just read the IRC chats, and read back at the end (if I could be bothered!). There was a live log page for the Game chat and the actual chat, which was bloody marvellous. It live updated every 15seconds.

When the game started we all got excited. A voice boomed: “Welcome to Recedas Revenge 2″ (or words to that effect). The Game chat started instructions. PenH was the first person up to control the game.

The basic set up was we (as a singular person) had been captured by a man called Lord Flaganroth, and he had also captured a princess. We needed to escape our surroundings so that we could release the princess. But it wasn’t going to be easy as we had to collect three things in order to save her:

• “The first is the Trophy of Amandier. You can find it at David’s Quays, at the north of the city, in the Amandier Art Tournament.”
• “The second are the Ancient Lecks of the Academy, which are held in the Bell Tower.”
• “The third and last is a Pelt of a Tretretretre, which you could find in a zoo. Now go with haste! And Gyvann!”

From then the game consisted of finding these objects, with obstacles in our way and challenges to face. And of course, many deaths! We had to solve the challenges to get the three objects needed to free the princess, and then take them back to her.

The details for the game chat are logged on the wikipedia by the lovely Mindez, who actually did the wiki in realtime, copying/pasting/formatting the entire logs onto it as well as having to control the game at one point. You may read them here.

Of course, when she was free, it wasn’t over, as Lord Flaganroth stood in our way, with his evil sock puppet. This led to the grand finale, where our sock puppet fought Lord Flaganroth’s sock puppet. We eventually defeated the sock puppet, through gruelling attacks, only to have Lord Flaganroth take the princess through a portal. Unfortunately the portal also took our sock puppet!

We were left with the following information:

• You are alone in the dungeon. Sans pelt, sans trophy, sans leck, sans puppet, sans everything.
• Just before the portal closed, you heard a strange whisper through it…
• Project Visor report 23 October 2006
• Intermittent signal recorded, weak, faint.
• Unable to determine location or direction.
• Signal lost after 0.278 seconds.
• Dispersal pattern suggests target located in arboreal area.
• Report ends.
• You wend your weary way home from the dungeon, making a mental note to sort out that wardrobe. Possibly with a shotgun.
• You don’t know how you can continue to live without your beloved sock puppet.
• You are sustained only by the knowledge that one day you will be reunited!
• You will have your revenge! Stay tuned for more Receda’s Revenge!

So, look forward to the next installment of Receda’s Revenge. I’ll be there. I hope you will too!

All the images drawn for the Receda’s Revenge 2 game are uploaded onto my Flickr, as I spent my time in the game screenshotting every image (and being donked every few seconds so I didn’t miss an image). I will mention that I missed two images. The very first puzzle, which was basically a similar version of the “Strange Loops” card. Slightly different  solve though. I also missed an animation of the “Surprise Attack” in the finale. I didn’t miss any player drawn images however.

As a side note, the small technical faults that occurred were greatly amusing.

I also wish to thank Mind Candy for that brilliant set up. It was the best online event I’ve attended. Brilliantly done, and hilariously enjoyable. I was crying with laughter at more than one point throughout the game. It was brilliant, and I really look forward to the next installment!