mtl008 Chapter 4673 Desperate Escape (45)
Chapter 4673 Desperate Escape (45)
Chapter 4673 A Desperate Escape (Forty-Five)
Let's think back to a few of the mechanisms. Let's leave aside the kind that shoots steel needles from inside doors—a disgusting trap with absolutely no technical sophistication. Opening and closing doors, flooding or draining water—these can't really be considered mechanisms either, since they can be controlled manually. The first one that can be considered a large-scale mechanism is the balance scale.
However, the balance mechanism system includes not only the balance in the room, but the balances in three rooms plus the six ceiling supports above. This entire system constitutes the balance mechanism system.
This mechanism system is quite sophisticated. It's easy to understand that achieving the smooth operation of such a mechanism using purely physical methods requires a certain level of expertise. Although it eventually broke down, it only succumbed to violent destruction; the parts that operated within the rules remained intact.
However, the entire mechanism only served as a tool and did not participate in the game at all. It used a balance scale to show players the possibilities of lowering and raising the scale, and at most, it used the side with the blood-stained basin to help players determine if they were the first to arrive. The entire game process was unrelated to the balance scale.
The game is based on players' judgments of the good and evil of the players who arrive before and after them. However, the mechanism does not provide any information to determine good and evil, including but not limited to: how many people donated blood, how long they stayed in the room, and whether one person or two people in a team donated blood. These are all important pieces of information.
If there are cooperative levels later, then similar information should have been provided earlier. Even if it drags on to this level, at least some information could have been provided through mechanisms. But there's absolutely no information. The scales mainly serve as a tutorial for beginners, at most letting players know that it's time to donate blood in this level, and that donating blood might be somewhat useful.
Anatoly pointed this out, but Stark was clearly unconvinced. He said, "Then tell me, what more important role can a mechanism play?"
“The biggest mistake you made was covering up the blood,” Anatoli said. “Of course, you might say that the mechanism required water to be added to the blood, so it couldn’t be visible. But the design itself is flawed.”
"If it were me, I would design this mechanism around the state of the blood. Because the amount of blood and its coagulation state can provide information about the number of blood donors and the length of time they stay. At the same time, the mechanism can be triggered by using the different states of the blood during the coagulation process. For example, liquid can flow down through the pipes, semi-solid blood can be left on the screen as a counterweight, and completely coagulated dried blood can be used to fix something in place."
"At this point, the question that blood donors need to consider changes from simply 'whether or not to donate blood' to 'how to donate blood to maximize its effectiveness.' This is the right way to encourage them to donate blood, rather than using such a superficial mechanism that relies entirely on players' guessing and gamble to complete the level."
"There are many interesting ways to play with blood. For example, there's the Blood Slot Machine, where each player pours their blood into one of the slots, and you can only move your blood if you hit the 'Big Lotto'. Or there's the Blood Bank, where different vaults offer different rewards based on their temperature and the amount of blood stored. Temperature determines how quickly the blood coagulates, and the coagulation speed determines the time limit for completing the objective. If you complete it within the time limit, you can win back your blood and have it reinfused into your body. If you exceed the time limit, you can't lose it back."
Pamela, listening from below, grimaced. She whispered to Harley, "To be honest, I feel like if it's designed like this, neither of us can escape."
“That guy’s plan was coercion, while what he’s talking about is pure enticement. Where there is oppression, there is resistance, but where there is gold, there are prospectors. If there’s interest on donating blood, then even if I might not win it back, I have to give it a try.”
“But the so-called interest might just be lowering the difficulty of the next level,” Pamela said. “You can’t take anything with you even if you win.”
“Playing games doesn’t necessarily have to make money,” Harley said. “Isn’t it fulfilling to reduce the difficulty of later stages of a game through your own thinking and strategy?”
“I think you have a pure gambler’s mentality,” Pamela sighed. “Luckily, the level designer was a bit incompetent. If it had been designed the way he said, you would have lost everything.”
“I’d be happy to,” Harley said, hands on her hips. “Even if we lose, it’s better than us standing there guessing for ages, and then you knock me out and drag me away.”
It has to be said that if Anatoly hadn't spoken up, most players wouldn't have realized the problem. But now that he's said it, many people have realized—the dungeon's fun isn't due to the mechanisms at all; the mechanisms serve absolutely no purpose.
No, to be precise, it had a negative effect. First, it caused a bottleneck, giving players a break, and then it created a huge mess for the organizers themselves.
In terms of entertainment value, there is some. The government agencies didn't do much in terms of creating trouble, but they certainly made a name for themselves in terms of humor.
Of course, while it's a puzzle room, the puzzles don't necessarily have to be the main theme. If it were a different designer, like Superman, they might readily admit it, perhaps even saying, "It's good enough if it can support the game." And indeed, it's not impossible to prioritize player-versus-player strategy with puzzles as a secondary element.
But who is Stark? Especially since this isn't even the normal Iron Man; this is the White Can, the evil version of Iron Man, which amplifies Tony Stark's arrogance tenfold. How could he possibly accept being a supporting character?
Anatoly didn't know the White Jar, but he had seen through his character from the previous levels. Just like he said, he only put that one mechanism in a room and nothing else. Wasn't that obviously meant to make people only look at his mechanism?
This kind of person is extremely self-centered, believing that their own design is the only true work of art, and that everyone else's ideas are just supplementary. They consider themselves the biggest contributor to the entire escape room, and all the praise goes to them. They believe that without them, the entire escape room would cease to function.
It was precisely this deduction that led Anatoly to his attack from this angle. Stark, as expected, fell for it. He trembled with rage, roaring, "What do you know? The key to mechanical engineering lies in its intricate structures and stable fits..."
“Let me interrupt,” Charles said. “Mr. Tiger, I’m afraid I have to remind you that your mechanism has neither a sophisticated structure nor a stable fit.”
Bruce chimed in, "You don't actually think the polygonal structure of the balance mechanism you created is ingenious, do you? Without it, I wouldn't have been able to deduce the location of the central energy room so easily."
"Haha, so it seems you have only yourself to blame for being hunted down now." Harley retorted, laughing as she spoke. "You ruined your own safe house with the ring you designed, you betrayed the most important structure of your secret room with the scales you designed, and now the trap room you designed has trapped you. Without you, who will make us laugh?"
“Don’t say that, Miss. Didn’t he help us a lot?” Loki followed up. “Without these traps he designed, we wouldn’t have been able to get through so easily. To be honest, this escape room is a bit too easy, a complete waste of our high-difficulty tickets. We have to give him a bad review after we get out…”
“Yes,” Schiller said from below, “I think the gentleman upstairs was right. ‘The organization is like a giant championship trophy standing in the middle of a football field. If it has any function, it’s probably that it tripped up its own people.’”
Everyone burst into laughter, a joyful atmosphere filling the entire level. There was no time for a moment of silence for Stark; what followed was the mockery from the control room.
The clown was laughing so hard he was practically falling off his chair. He wiped away his tears and said, "Remember what he said? The Soviets were his nemesis! Not very bright, but they certainly knew their own limitations! Hahahahahahaha!"
"Ha, this guy always has that long face, calling everyone a mechanical engineering idiot. He's finally met his match, hasn't he?" Scarecrow was clearly harboring resentment for a long time, after all, their collaboration on designing this secret room hadn't been pleasant. White Jar's arrogant personality destined him to be incompatible with most people.
“No wonder I always felt something was off about this escape room,” Mephisto said. “The plot was weak to begin with, and there were no cutscenes or anything. It all relied on the contents of the room to carry it. But the room itself was empty; there was nothing there except for the mechanisms. Even a few corpses or skeletons would have helped to create some atmosphere.”
Although the other madmen also disliked placing corpses in the room because they found it too superficial, they did agree with Mephisto's assessment that the room contained too little information, and everyone was focused on the mechanisms, which was the main reason why the mechanisms were violently destroyed.
If you had simply added a few more cult-like formations, company documents, victim messages, or set up some explorable secret rooms or passages outside the checkpoints to wear them down, they wouldn't have resorted to such destructive tactics.
It was Stark who insisted, against all odds, that the level design should be as simple as possible, arguing that adding too many distractions might be seen as mindless resource stacking. Meanwhile, Greed wanted to save on the budget and was too lazy to write any story text, which led to the current design.
If the mechanism itself were fun, that would be fine, but the poor interactivity, limited information, and lack of research opportunities make the whole process too linear and lacking in the joy of exploration.
It's fair to say that if the people participating in the game hadn't been so resourceful—creating their own exploration options when none existed, and relying on their amazing wisdom and mind-reading abilities to make a ton of guesses and engage in a lot of strategic maneuvering despite limited information—the game would likely have received negative reviews due to its tedious and monotonous nature.
“Your inflated desire for praise has ruined everything,” Anatoly concluded. “You think players are unworthy to touch your carefully designed mechanisms, so you power them up, leaving them helpless and devoid of any interactivity; you also don’t think players can understand mechanical engineering, so you don’t inspire them to explore the principles of mechanical structure. As a result, everything you design is extremely superficial and uninteresting.”
Anatoly revealed his true intentions: "If your shallow and impoverished spiritual world cannot bring us philosophical and artistic enjoyment, then at least you can use your well-developed limbs to make things easier for us. Let us, only out of charity and pity for you, not expose the folly we have witnessed here—I said, this is your only chance."