I took a look at the new experience tools for Second Life in a recent blog post, there I explained some changes and how they make some experiences far more seamless. In this post I’m going to look at the game these tools are being demonstrated in. Now before I go any further I should point people to the blog post about experience keys by Linden Lab and highlight that to fully appreciate this game you will need to download and install the experience keys project viewer. The game will work in other viewers, but you won’t get a full appreciate of the new experience keys.

The game features The Return Of The Cornfield to Second Life, a place with a history of being a resting place for some of the more naughty virtual world residents. Created by Linden Lab and their trusty sidekicks, The Moles, it’s a hack and slash collection game where corn bucks mean prizes. I’ll let the creators set the scene :

The Cornfield:

For many years, the Cornfield was a region of mythological status, where once naughty avatars were sent to think about what they had done. Rumor had it that “The Cornfield” was a vast star-lit field of corn and was cut off from communication with the rest of the world. Over the years, rumors spread across the grid of this infamous region that everyone at one time had heard about, but hardly anyone had ever seen. It was thought to be nothing but a tale…that is until now…
Present day…

A group of young explorers set out one day to explore. They teleported to the farthest reaches of the grid, when suddenly their screens went blank and their shoes went where they should never humanly ever go. All of a sudden, their screens flashed bright, and they found themselves dazed and confused inside an old creepy barn.

The barn seemed abandoned. Creaks and strange noises startled them. They could not find a way out back to humanity. They saw some baskets laying on the floor, so they picked them up, and dared to venture outside. The air was thick, and everything to be seen was enveloped in a strange, eerie mist. A huge cornfield spread out wide in front of them. The corn rustled as if something was out there…something not quite human.

As darkness approached, the strange noises grew louder, and the rustling increased. They looked at each other, faces pale in the moonlight. One of them grabbed a plank for she knew something bad was about to happen. They looked at each other once more, knowing what had to be done, and one by one, they entered the Cornfield…

The starting location is a barn, you will find yourself armed with a wooden plank and carrying a basket, which is for the collection of corn. This corn can be found, not surprisingly, in the cornfield outside the barn however beware The Griefers because they will send you packing, rather quickly.

 

However before you venture out into the cornfield you should familiarise yourself with The Hud :

This informs you of your health, how many corn bucks you have, how much corn you are currently carrying, minimse, maximise the Hud, your current weapon (as you progress you have the chance to purchase better weapons) and Help, which sends you a very useful notecard in case you missed it on the way in.

The notecard also explains some game settings which you should pay attention to as well as explaining how you control your character. Movement is via the cursor keys and you can choose to be in mouse look, although you can happily play the game without being in mouse look.

Once out in the cornfield the objective is to collect corn and corn bucks by running over them. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds, especially early on whilst you have the wooden plank as your weapon. Griefers will attack you and you can try and fight them off by left clicking the mouse button but the chances are that you will pay quite a few visits to the graveyard.

At this point I would advise you to get your bearings. The graveyard is a fair way from the barn. The barn is where you need to get back to with your corn, so work out the route from the graveyard to the barn, there’s no perfect route, the griefers could be lurking anywhere but getting a grip on your bearings will definitely help.

The reasons you need to get back to the barn are multiple. The first reason is that you can only carry twenty pieces of corn at any one time, you need to get to the barn to place your corn in the corn bins, then you receive corn bucks, which you keep. One piece of corn will earn you one corn buck. Please note that you do not need to collect twenty pieces of corn before returning the the barn, you can head back there with one piece.

Just click on a corn bin to deposit your corn. The other reason that you will want to get back to the barn is because there’s a doorway to the company store there.

This is an important location because this is where you can buy prizes, powerups, armour and better weapons with your Corn Bucks. The prizes are located on shelves within the store. Potential weapons include : Plank, Chainsaw, Shotgun and Grey Goo Grenade. Obviously with better weapons and armour, you have more chance of fighting off the griefers and therefore spending less time in the graveyard!

However you are not totally at the mercy of the griefers in the cornfield, if you can find some moonshine lying around you can run over that and get a health boost, there are also hiding places that appear where you can get temporary refuge from the hordes of griefers that can appear. There’s also a rumour that at night, a moonshine still appears in a part of the cornfield, legend says that if you find that, all your health will be restored.

One thing to note here is that if you are sent packing by the griefers, you drop your corn. Now this corn then becomes fair game for other players to pick up, so if you can’t get back to where you dropped your corn then there’s a chance that someone else will gather your hard earned corn!

Back at the barn you will also find a leader board, which as the name suggests displays a list of the leading scorers within the game.

Overall this is a fun, albeit at times frustrating experience. Sometimes there are quirks, such as you run over corn but don’t collect it, then you have to stop and turn back. However the action is fast paced, you’re never far away from corn, or griefers.

Although the game is aimed at demonstrating the new experience keys, it also demonstrates a lot of existing features of Second Life such as use of Huds, use of camera controls, use of mouse look. This all adds to what is quite a fun experience. Whether people will keep coming back for more is another matter but the initial experience, once you realise that lots of people end up in the graveyard and it’s not just you, is a rather fun one.

However you can’t teleport directly to The Cornfield, you have to get there via Portal Park. This means that if you logout whilst in the cornfield, when you log back in you will be in an infohub as your previous location will not be available.

Overall it seems to be a job well done, the game isn’t laggy and the environment seems to have been built with good building practices in mind. Maybe one day the Lindens and The Moles will talk about the making of The Return Of The Cornfield and share tips with everyone, that would be rather interesting, to me anyway!

Personally I think Linden Lab and The Moles should build a point and click type adventure game, set perhaps in Baker Street, with visiting American consultant Gray Of The Lab from San Francisco playing a starring role. I really think point and click adventures could work really well inside a Second Life experience.

Obviously these sort of experiences won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but that’s part and parcel of the beauty and beast of Second Life, it’s a very dynamic environment and if you don’t like something, you can teleport somewhere else, you may even build your own experience. When I was there I saw a comment from Loki Eliot pondering how Linden Lab had achieved something here that he had been trying to do for some time, one of his companions suggested it was due to the experience keys, so there are improved experiences here and hopefully people who enjoy building experiences will take full advantage.

I have to say this was an enjoyable experience for me, but as I said earlier, Second Life is  platform of very diverse tastes and opinions, at the very least I’d suggest people take a look just to see what experience keys can potentially bring to the table.

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