The Eggs Files III

I'd love to spend some entries talking about how everyone did at The Eggs Files III, but I can't. See, I wasn't actually there. Oh, I was there at first. I cleaned everything up and put out some food. I welcomed the guests. I handed out the introductory materials. I went outside to test my new two-way radios.

Then, I was kidnapped. That put a damper on my observing.

But we'll get to that. First, let's talk fonts. I've enjoyed choosing fonts to set the mood for the puzzles. As before, the official FBI publications (mostly introductory materials) were given in the X-Files font. For the puzzles themselves, I wanted something that resembled the hand-written notes of someone running for his life, so I chose Con Jitters, which is based on the writing of people (like Dart) who solve crosswords for speed. You should download and install these fonts for the best viewing experience of documents.

Four pages were laid out on the coffee table. There were guides to being Field Agents and Supervising Agents, which were nearly identical to the ones from last year. The introduction page explained the story and was accompanied by another page that explained the structure of the game.

The Cigarette-Smoking Bunny was trying to find a vaccine that counteracted a deadly disease that the aliens had created. Peep Throat had found this vaccine and hidden it somewhere, then shredded his notes. The agents were called to find and decipher Peep Throat's notes before the CSB found the vaccine.

Twenty-four eggs were hidden around the house. Each one held a scrap of one of the notes as well as a clue to the location of another egg. The egg clues were numbered and in sequence, to make them easier to keep track of. When the eggs had been found, the notes could be reconstructed like a jigsaw, then solved. The answers to the notes gave an instruction that led to the endgame.

Things got more complicated when the Assistant Director (viz. me) was kidnapped by the Cigarette-Smoking Bunny, who demanded the vaccine as ransom. The agents were mostly on their own, except for occasional menacing phone calls from the CSB and panicked radio messages from the Assistant Director.

Background and Construction
I got the idea for a kidnapping back in the beginning of January. The plans were much grander, then. (I'd tell you about some of the flourishes, but I may still use them elsewhere.) Anyway, it became clear that, if I'm going to absent myself from the process, it'll only work if I make sure everything is as easy as possible. That's something I've been striving for generally with The Eggs Files, but it'd be even more crucial. If something went wrong, it'd be really hard to fix. So I made everything a bit simpler.

Agents in Action
Things went mostly smoothly, from my side of things. I was put into an unusual acting position while playing the panicked Assistant Director and the cutthroat Cigarette-Smoking Bunny. Nobody was taking it as serious as I was, and I was taking it uberseriously, since I thought that'd be more fun. So while I was pretending to be dying of an alien-manufactured disease, the people in my house were telling me that they were all having beer. Things were even worse during conversations with the CSB, but I'll get to those later. I felt a bit like a video-game character, who acts with deadly seriousness, even though you've renamed Link "Kittykat" or something. And later on, I had to have the memory retention of a Metal Gear Solid guard, when they told their enemy things they shouldn't have.

But it was fun, and everything went smoothly. I'm going to write about the individual puzzles, but for specifics, you'll have to go to someone like cramerica, who was actually there.

ThuNYTX: 7:25.

Forgotten Arm.

Also, there's a new Aimee Mann album coming out in May. You can listen to part of it now. The tracks are apparently rotating, so I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to mention this when "Video" was available.