Chapter 1 Qiao Liang's Observation

Qiao Liang looked around, impressed. As expected of President Pei, he always came up with new ideas.

The entrance experience at Spooky Manor was quite different from other places.

Almost all the buildings were converted from old industrial buildings, so they had a sense of history. At the same time, the style of the entire area was very unified, so no building felt out of place.

The whole park felt open, like a park, not closed off at all.

Many amusement parks required tickets to limit the flow of people, so the parks seemed relatively closed. After entering, tourists were more anxious because time was limited. They all wanted to quickly line up for those famous attractions and didn't have the mood to stroll around.

But here it was different. People could enter and exit at will, giving the feeling of taking a walk in a nearby park, which was more relaxing.

Soon, the group came to the central square and saw the uniquely shaped Golden Maze and the Healing Fountain in front of it.

In the distance, they could see the large factory buildings where the three projects were located.

The signposts clearly indicated the directions. The names of the three projects were: Desperate Survival, Haunted House Nightmare, and Ultimate Horror.

There were leaflets at the entrance of the nearby stores that could be taken freely. In addition to the map of the entire Spooky Manor, there were also descriptions of the different projects.

Someone took a few leaflets and distributed them to everyone.

"Damn, the prices are so different? Desperate Survival is only 10 yuan, but Ultimate Horror is 100 yuan?"

"After all, the name 'Ultimate Horror' implies that it was built with a lot of money."

"'Ultimate Horror' has no description, only two words: Don't Go? What a marketing genius, it makes me want to go even more..."

"But this pricing strategy is obviously a big problem, right? According to this description, Desperate Survival seems to be a replayable mode like *BeQuiet*. Since it's replayable, shouldn't the price be higher? It should be at least thirty yuan, right?"

"Ultimate Horror's price is a bit high. It's just a large factory space. Many people get scared out in less than five minutes. If the price is so high, people will probably be reluctant to go, right?"

"Who knows, let's go in and see."

It was still 2011, and Jingzhou was a second-tier city. A haunted house ticket for 100 yuan was already considered relatively expensive. Of course, Desperate Survival for only 10 yuan was definitely a bargain.

Because it had just opened and it was Friday morning, the flow of people had not yet reached its peak. Although there were people lining up at the entrance of "Desperate Survival," there weren't many.

The group quickly joined the end of the line.

After all, judging from the number of people, in addition to tourists wandering around and shopping in the Golden Maze, 70% of the tourists who were ready to experience the projects were gathered at the first project, 30% were at the second project, and only a few tourists went to ask about the third project, but were quickly told that they had to go through the second project first.

It was obviously the most appropriate to experience the first project while there were fewer people.

While waiting in line, Qiao Liang observed the number of people admitted each time and found that about 100 people were admitted every 15 minutes.

Qiao Liang looked at the leaflet in his hand again and understood that the interior of the super-large factory was actually divided into 10 parts, with a total of five different decorative styles, each part being more than 400 square meters and able to accommodate 10 people.

So, the line moved relatively quickly, but many tourists who came out of the exit ran to the end of the line again, seemingly eager to play a second time.

Qiao Liang and the others were relatively close to the front, and it was their turn after waiting for 15 minutes.

While in line, everyone had already read the specific rules of the project on the adjacent sign. Qiao Liang felt that it was like a simplified version of *BeQuiet*, and the scenes seemed similar as well, probably using the original artwork from the game as the style design directly.

This made him even more excited.

Before entering the project, a staff member distributed a special bracelet to everyone, which had to be returned after the game.

This bracelet seemed to have a heart rate monitoring function, and it also had a very bright and eye-catching light on it.

Before entering, everyone could freely choose a scene: mental hospital, madman village, suburban hotel, ancient castle, and school. These scenes were obviously consistent with the classic scenes in *BeQuiet*, but in miniature versions.

Moreover, it was impossible to really build an ancient castle in the factory; they were just trying to get as close as possible in terms of style.

The map was reduced, the gameplay was simplified, and the pace was accelerated, obviously to reduce the learning cost, retain only the most interesting gameplay, and allow most tourists to understand the gameplay in the shortest time and have fun.

"Desperate Survival," according to the rules, was a special kind of escape room. All the tourists played ordinary people who were locked up here, and their common goal was to find the decryption incantations in the scene, activate them, and find the exit to escape.

The decryption incantations were pre-arranged and scattered throughout the venue, numbering in the dozens, but only a dozen of them would be activated in each game, creating randomness.

After tourists found an activatable decryption incantation, they could accumulate progress by bringing their bracelet close to it. Once the progress was full, it would be permanently activated, bringing them closer to winning the game.

A staff member would play a madman, wandering around the venue. The loudspeaker he carried would play terrifying roars and background music to remind tourists that terror was approaching.

On the surface, the staff member was catching tourists, but in reality, he wouldn't really chase them, as chasing could cause falls and injuries, posing safety hazards.

So the correct way to play was for the tourists to search for the decryption incantations, while the staff member slowly patrolled the entire venue. When the tourists heard the staff member coming, they had to immediately find a place to hide and wait for him to walk away.

And the bracelet that was distributed at the beginning represented the Sanity (san) value in the *BeQuiet* game. (Sanity is a common term in horror games to represent a character's mental stability.)

The bracelet would detect the tourist's heart rate. When the tourist was frightened and their heart rate suddenly increased or remained high, the bracelet would record it and gradually change the color of the light on the bracelet.

Green represented healthy, yellow represented dangerous, and red represented out of control.

The staff member also had a small remote control hidden in his hand. If a tourist appeared in his field of vision, the staff member could directly change the heart rate calculation of the tourist's bracelet, making the bracelet turn red faster.

Once it turned red, the tourist could no longer activate the incantations with the bracelet. Conversely, when a tourist's red bracelet appeared within a certain distance of other tourists, there would be a "contagion" phenomenon, and the other tourists' bracelets would also turn from green to yellow and then to red.

However, correspondingly, there was also a "safe house" design in the game. Some specific areas were only accessible to normal tourists, not to red bracelet tourists or staff members. In this area, the bracelet was not affected by the outside world.

So, it was foolish for a red bracelet tourist to stare at a tourist and try to "infect" them. The best way was to wander around and scare people to spread the infection.

If the players escaped within the time limit, all the "healthy" tourists won; if they failed to escape within the time limit, the "out of control" tourists won.

...

Fifteen minutes later, Qiao Liang and the others left the exit with lingering expressions on their faces.

"It's so interesting, even a bit addictive. I want to play it again!"

"It wasn't enough, but the sense of immersion is quite strong, like playing a real-life *BeQuiet*!"

"That staff member seemed to know what he was doing. When I heard him coming, I quickly hid in the cabinet next to me, but he knew I was in the cabinet, so he deliberately wandered around and looked inside through the cracks in the cabinet. I was so scared that my heart was racing, and my bracelet turned yellow!"

"Old Qiao, you're just a troublemaker! You got scared red yourself and then ran out to chase us. Do you even have a conscience?"

"That's right, we were about to clear the level, but you came out and messed things up. My bracelet was yellow, but you scared me and it turned red. I had no choice but to join you."

Qiao Liang argued with conviction: "That's how the game rules are. The fact is that I won, so what?"

Everyone said that they had never seen such a shameless person!

Although he was scorned by everyone, Qiao Liang had a great time himself.

He could now understand why many tourists immediately returned to the line after playing once, because this project was really addictive!

As a gaming up-loader, Qiao Liang could see many mature game design concepts in the design of this project.

The basic gameplay of this project was actually very primitive: hide-and-seek, with *BeQuiet* packaging.

However, compared to many escape room projects and haunted house projects, its biggest advantage was two things: replayability and moderate horror.

Most escape room and haunted house projects had the same layout due to the limitation of the venue. After experiencing it once, people didn't want to experience it a second time. But "Desperate Survival" was a multiplayer game, and the random refresh of the incantation locations ensured that each entry experience would be different.

The staff member playing the madman would cooperate with the game based on the different reactions of different tourists, and each movement trajectory was random and unpredictable.

Each player's heart rate changed differently, the "out of control" time was different, and the behavior after "out of control" was also different, which had different effects on the overall situation. So each time they played, the strategies players needed to adopt would also change.

The horror of this project was moderate, a little scary, but not so scary that people wouldn't dare to participate.

In the game, the terrifying atmosphere was well created through environmental cues, staff members dressed as madmen, and the terrifying background music played by the staff members, so that tourists had to be careful and vigilant when searching for decryption incantations, observing their surroundings and quickly finding a place to hide when they heard the background music approaching.

At the same time, the staff members moved very slowly and didn't really catch people, and the visibility in the scene was also acceptable, so people wouldn't be overly frightened.

So, even someone as timid as Qiao Liang could persist in this project and have fun.

Qiao Liang himself was a loyal player of *BeQuiet*. In his opinion, this project simplified the complex gameplay of the game, making it more suitable for offline games.

In short, such a fun project only cost ten yuan per game. It would be a waste not to play it three or four times!

Qiao Liang looked at the end of the line. There seemed to be several hundred people lining up now. Estimating the waiting time, it was probably already an hour.

A fan said in shock: "There are already so many people? Does that mean that lining up for this project will take at least three hours in the future?"

Qiao Liang shook his head: "Not necessarily. It's normal for there to be a lot of people recently. After all, Spooky Manor's advertisement is so good that many local residents of Jingzhou have come to experience it. The key is whether it can maintain this popularity after the first wave of people passes. That's the key to whether it can be profitable in the future."

Everyone thought about it, and it seemed to be the case.

Many closed haunted houses and amusement parks must have been very popular when they first opened. Whether they could continue to operate for a long time depended on the future.

"So what do we do now?" someone asked.

Experiencing "Desperate Survival" again would take at least an hour to queue up. Although this queuing time was not long compared to other amusement parks, there were two projects next door with significantly fewer people.

"How about we try Haunted House Nightmare? You can only play Ultimate Horror after passing Haunted House Nightmare," a fan suggested.

"Well, we're already here," someone agreed.

Qiao Liang quickly shook his head: "I don't want to go! There must be a reason why there are so few people! I'm definitely going to be scared to tears!"

The fans exchanged glances and directly grabbed Qiao Liang: "Then we have to go even more! We agreed to advance and retreat together, no one can run away!"