SEPTEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to September's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: CHAOS.

All Test Drive Memes contain at least one clue to the Deerington's upcoming in-game events for the month! Keep your eyes peeled! But...not literally.

Characters may die during TDMs, but you do not need to count it towards a game-canonical death unless you want to. Consider it a freebie. All TDMs can be considered game canon as TDMs introduce minor aspects about the world of Deerington that can be revisited by characters later on in the game. You may also use TDMs for your application writing sample as well as AC.

CW: Torture (emotional and possibly physical), claustrophobia, potential weapon violence (guns, knives, spears, flamethrowers, etc.), possible body horror, emotional manipulation, emojis
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

DICE BLOCK

In case everyone hasn't had enough fun and games to last a life time in the good old town of Deerington, apparently this month brings you one more. Maybe you were just walking through the door to get into your own house, or maybe you were leaving from work — the moment you walk through any door, you'll find that it doesn't open up to the place you were looking for. Instead, you find yourself standing on a giant game board and you seem to be right on the start space. The doors already disappeared behind you, don't bother trying to run back. The only exit is at the end and you'll have to hope you make it there.

But you aren't alone! With you are other unfortunate souls who hopefully weren't just looking for a quick bathroom break. Some of them might look a little worse for wear. What happened? Well, looks like you may have to ask later, because you'll only really have time to exchange names if you don't already know one another before a large screen you didn't notice was hanging from the ceiling will light up. There's a giant image of a typical six-sided game die that's completely stationary. For the moment. Shortly after, a voice will come on over the speakers, echoing in the otherwise fairly empty room. It's overly cheerful, grating, and giggles at the end of every sentence.

Welcome, players! Is this your first time? Yes? Great!
Would you like to hear the rules?
Okay!
Each player will take a turn rolling their die.
You can then move the number of spaces shown — but only those spaces!
You can move forward, backward, right, and left, but not diagonally!
Each space will have a symbol.
The spaces with a clover are lucky spaces! Congratulations! You'll gain some fortune, whether it's an extra turn, moving ahead more spaces, or gaining an important item you can take with you on your journey!
The spaces with the skull are unlucky spaces! Boooooo, that's too bad! You'll befall some grave misfortune here. Hopefully it won't set you back too badly! Make sure to avoid these at all costs!
The spaces with a chest are item spaces! Here you'll be able to win prizes, like medical supplies or weapons! Maybe even a small something from home! Wouldn't that be nice?
Your goal is to make it to the end alive! Good luck! And remember to have lots of fun!

The first player's name will pop up on the screen, before the die will begin to randomly blink between numbers. Eventually it will land on a number. Once the player moves forward and lands on their space, it will repeat for the second player. This will go on until one (or both players) reach the end!

When they said to make sure to not land on an unlucky space, they certainly weren't kidding. Each one seems to come with some sort of random punishment or horror; it can be as light as having to move back a few spaces or go back to the start, or as heavy as breaking a random bone or feeling a blade slice open your skin. Maybe you'll start to slowly turn into a monster or become filled with the desire to kill your opponent. Anything can happen, but it's always going to be bad.

Players who reach the end will be able to go through the door and end up back wherever it was they were intending to go in the first place. Players who lose? Well... It's back to the beginning for you. Time to wait for the next player. Better luck next time.

DANCE DANCE

But what's behind door number two! People are going to start to get tired of walking around in their own houses at this rate. Even if you managed to escape the board game horrors, this new room you've found yourself in doesn't seem much better. In the center is a large TV screen and on the floor in front of it are two pads with arrows pointing in four directions; up, down, left, and right. Anyone who is familiar with Dance Dance Revolution might feel right at home! But fear not, there are instructions on the screen for you to follow if you need them.

Two players only, and you'll have to work together! It's a team dance and you'll want to encourage each other to stay perfectly in sync. The doors won't open until you finish, and should you mess up? Well, look up, friend!

The ceiling is covered in sharp, painful looking spikes and every time someone misses a beat or steps on the wrong arrow, the ceiling will drop down a foot. It's pretty high up there, but miss more than three arrows and you're gonna start to really feel the pressure. The spikes are looking a lot bigger and more ominous than they did when they were all the way at the top. Hopefully you've got some good rhythm.

But this is a good lesson in teamwork! Even the worst dancers might be able to get out of here okay if they've got someone who they can work together with. Maybe their perfect scores will make up for your two left feet. You can only hope you're both so lucky.

THAT'S NOT A "MEH" FACE!

Everyone loves to get a text, don't they? Of course they do! Which is why someone has been kind enough to send out a little special something to everyone's Fluid's this month! There's no name you recognize — in fact, it doesn't even look like a name is attached at all. The sender's identification only looks like this: 🥳

The message you've gotten is pretty simple though! Each person has received a text message with one emoji inside. No rhyme or reason applied! That's... random, isn't it? You can try to text back, but no one will answer, and so you might as well just close your device and forget about it.

Every person who received a text will find that their personality starts to shift. They begin to take on some aspect that's tied to the emoji they received. Did you get a simple smiley face? You're happy and relaxed for the time being! Or maybe a silly face will lead you to become more of a prankster. An eggplant could have someone feeling like sexting a Special Someone. An angry face might get you really riled up, even towards people you love. Did you get a knife? Time to start stabbing. A gun? Those people around you look like really good target practice...

The options are endless. Each emojis effects will last for twenty-four hours or until another emoji is sent from the same user.

Character Arrival

You can read how all characters arrive in Deerington here.

There is not a collective "all these characters showed up at the exact same moment" occurrence in Deerington. Since characters fall asleep, die, or pass out at various times throughout all their worlds, it wouldn't make too much sense if they arrived in game all at the exact same time. There should be some discrepancy between character arrival, whether by a couple minutes, hours, or even days up to a week.

The players are entirely in control of how/when they want to play their characters arriving in Deerington. For TDMs, you can play it like your character has just arrived and that can be maintained as your game canon, or you can wait until game events for that moment. Or you don't need to acknowledge it at all. The flexibility for character allows a bit more of an organic feel to the character arrival situation, so please play it to whatever feels right for you.

If you are interested in having an "arrival" introduction for one of your TDM prompts, you are more than welcome to explore that option.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

a. dance dance

[ there's something certainly off about whatever triggers the partnering for this dance game considering tobias is entirely incapable of helping the other poor soul trapped in this room with him in any way.

even changing into a human would only delay the inevitable by a few minutes, considering he's dreadfully out of practice in that body and wasn't exactly anything approaching graceful even before he'd swapped that body for a hawk's full time.

he's not terribly thrilled by the idea of exposing himself as anything other than a common redtailed hawk so soon in such a strange town, dream or not, but those spikes up on the ceiling are looking especially sharp and he would feel sort of bad just leaving this person to pay for his own inadequacies.

so he sends a little bit of thought speak their way. ] < I don't think I'm going to be much help here. Sorry. >

b. meh face

[ the fact that this town decided to make phones that would actually fit snugly enough around one of tobias' talons that he could actually keep the thing on him in any form is odd, but something he can't really bring himself to have any complaints about.

it means he can keep track of events happening in town without having to regularly morph human and actually ask someone (the horror), and he's even managed to communicate over the network as a bird, albeit very carefully.

that doesn't make the single, directed message sent his way any less confusing. for one, he's hardly managed to make any sort of connection via hunt and peck (ha) typing that should warrant a direct message. for another, there's no actual words in the text sent. just a single image: 👧

he perches quietly in a tree to consider the message for a moment before deciding to investigate, flying down to the ground to change into something with fingers which, as unnecessarily convoluted as they might be, were infinitely superior to talons in handling the phone for long stretches of time. such as what a small scale investigation might involve.

tobias doesn't even realize that he's morphed into taylor, rather than his old body, until a long lock of blonde hair falls in front of his face as he studies the fluid's screen and he's forced to push it away. only to, of course, pull it back in front of his face to examine quizzically after he's realized the implication of its presence. ]

That wasn't supposed to happen...

c. wildcard

[ go wild! ]

Edited 2019-08-27 02:05 (UTC)

Man, I know we haven't seen each other in a few years but geeze, you'd think you'd recognize this handsome face anywhere.

[Marco offers Tobias a saucy little wink, hands on his hips, and he glances back up at the spikes.]

I mean, if this was a solo game, I'd be totally golden. You got a point though, Bird Boy, I'm kinda doubting talons are gonna do much good on the dance pad.

[Tapping his finger against his lower lip, he shrugs narrow shoulders.]

What do you say to looking for a way out of here and then a good old cockroach morph?

[ tobias recognizes that pattern of speech anywhere, even if the face is distinctly older than it should be. even outside of the other boy recognizing him immediately though, nobody but marco talks like that. jake would call it unique. rachel would probably say something a bit less kind.

his feathers rustle slightly in muted agitation as he tries to figure out the disparity in what he's seeing right now in comparison to the last time he spoke to marco, and there's only one possible explanation he can land on. ]

< Did Ax teach you how to make yourself look older or something? >

[ still, the fact that he's stuck in this room with someone else that has access to the same methods of possible escape as him is a relief that has him swooping up to the highest perch he can find and casting a keen eye across the room for any potential weak points. ]

[ The other boy in the room seems much more astonished by the contraption on the floor and the fancy television than the fact that the hawk in the room just spoke to him. They don't have anything like this in the 40's, that's for sure.

In fact, when that voice resonates through his mind, Hugh tilts his head to look at the bird with an expression of something like familiarity, and a smile appears on his face.

His headmistress happens to be able to turn into a peregrine falcon at will, and the boarding school under her... wing is for adolescents with all manner of oddities. A hawk that can speak? That's the closest thing to being at home that Hugh has felt since stumbling into this strange place. ]

Oh, hello. [ His voice is a friendly, English lilt. Apart from the fact he seems at ease casually talking to a hawk, he seems relatively normal on the surface -- though Tobias might be able to detect the faint sound of...buzzing inside the boy. ]

Do you think there's anything up there you could fly and reach? Maybe there's a trick switch to open the room or something.

[ the relaxed reaction to a talking (sort of) bird is a nice experience, and for a moment tobias actually wishes he had a human mouth to smile back at the boy with. that is, if he even remembers how to do it without the whole thing turning unfortunate, anyway.

his tail wiggles a bit in cautious delight at the reception and doesn't hesitate to fly up for a better view of the entire room at the other boy's request. ]

< No switches. > [ he reports back pretty quickly. he's not terribly surprised by the find, considering the setup, but it's still a touch disappointing regardless. ]

< No windows or vents or anything that we could use instead of the door, either. >

[ Hugh tilts his head back to watch, face lighting up at the display of the large bird taking flight. He's always preferred animals, insects, to people. He's much more at home sprawled out in a meadow with bees buzzing around him, watching the birds fly by, than cooped up in any actual house with actual people in it. In fact, if he has to be trapped in a creepy pointy room with colourful things on the floor, he's glad it's with a hawk. ]

Blimey... Sounds like we really are trapped. [ What to do about that. The brunette places his hands on his hips for a moment, looking round, then back to the floor. ]

Do you think maybe we have to put in some kind of code down here?

[ Hugh is tragically unfamiliar with Dance Dance Revolution. Or video games at all. ]

[ tobias' wings flutter anxiously with quiet guilt as he considers the issue of being trapped. he's perfectly capable of transforming into a flea and escaping via a crack or gap in the wall. of leaving the other boy behind to fend for himself.

he doesn't want to though. he wants to help find a solution that gets both of them out safely. so he swoops back down to alight on the machine near hugh and gives the whole setup a sharp, careful look with his hawk's eyes. ]

< It's a game, I think. You step on the arrows that show up on the screen. >

[The man standing next to Tobias might be somewhat surprising in appearance, considering the fact that he has a pair of golden eagle wings folded against his back, as well as diamond talons at the end of his fingers. And while it takes him a moment, he doesn't seem that surprised at the hawk talking in his head.]

It's alright. I admit I've never practiced much with this sort of game either. I suppose I should have when Jimmy dragged us to an arcade that one time...