Bayou Chat Noir's Cat People Halloween Hunt

By Klaus Bereznyak

There's still time to dive into the sights and sounds of the sweltering delta on the Bayou Chat Noir sims and participate in the Cat People hunt until the end of the month. At any time, these districts are worth wandering, but the hunt is the perfect opportunity to immerse in the swampy atmosphere and see some of the most atmospheric locations.

Bayou Chat Noir, is modeled after French Louisiana in the early 1900s. The personality of one of the notorious sim owners, SL impressario 'Kitty' (Vinje), looms at every turn and it is popular with former residents of the similarly themed St. John sims which closed in December 2017. Kitty's love Shack was a popular venue in the St. John community and has been transplanted here to continue business as usual.

The Cat People hunt is based on the story of the 1942 horror film directed by Jacques Torneur. It tells of a Serbian woman, Irena, who cannot keep the 'cat' part of her true nature hidden for long. Participants begin in the zoo, by the panther cage, to pick up the first clue. Each of the ten clues, obtained by clicking on a found object in the location, unfolds a little more of the story and tells you where to go and what to look for next. Local windlight and volume up is recommended for the best experience. If there's some slow loading, you can drop the draw distance without missing much, because it's fairly gloomy anyway.

I found most of the items relatively easy to find. The locations themselves take a little more exploration but can all be reached on foot and pretty much follow a linear route that doesn't involve any back tracking or teleporting.

The town and swamp is eerily lit for the season and decorated with pumpkins and lanterns and haunted by glowing wraiths. The hunt covers shops, and galleries as well as taking in the residential areas, a church, a graveyard and a hunted house where there is a 'forgotten room' to discover. The final clue unlocks the room full of prizes, five in all plus directions to a bonus prize that can be picked up at Kitty's bar. Not surprisingly, the prizes are cat themed and well worth while for the hour or so it will take to get around.

SLURL:
Bayou Chat Noir: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BAYOU%20CHAT%20NOIR/164/203/21

Klaus Bereznyak

A Steamy Mystery at Terradale

By Gemma Cleanslate

 
I always look forward to the opening of new LEA regions granted to the artists for a period of time. It is fun to go through them all. I do not write about each one, but choose the ones that really take my attention and keep it. This interesting region really grabbed my attention. It is not one of the sparkly artistic creations, but contains a story.
 

The tone is set as soon as you land in the sim. It is a town that is reminiscent of the old English coastal, or perhaps, New England towns. It has the appearance of a mill town, with homes and factories intermingled and the ocean with its light house in view of all. When you land you will be greeted.

 
There is an odd piece of pipe equipment looking much like a humanoid type sitting around all over town that contains the story of Sarah.  Be sure to look for him where ever you go. Sarah is missing. I turned from the welcome sign and entered the building across the way. It was an artist studio with workings on the wall incomplete for the most part. I entered the second room where I found a message giver I came to know as Perry Piper. He uttered the words of Sean, “ My Sarah --She was everything to me. My muse, my friend, my partner, my lover. We were one......”
 
I turned and left and went to the town square and began my search. There I found missing posters plastered to the Town Monument. 

There is so much to be seen in each of  the buildings and so much to learn about Sarah’s life as you move through the town.  People who knew her tell the story to you and with each fragment you build a vision of her in your mind. At least I did. I realized that all is not as it seems, and I kept hoping I would find that she had flown the coop and headed to other lands looking for a more interesting life. But that was not to be. To those who knew her Sarah lived a quiet life, enjoying her horse rides and gazing out at the ocean. 

 
Chic Aeon has created this region and the story hidden within it. His houses are decorated with so many fascinating items to inspect. I thoroughly enjoyed each of them.Each home adds a little to the story.  The commercial buildings are littered with interesting pieces too, including some games to try.bring a friend along with you . There are hot air balloons in the air and I hoped to catch a ride. But no. 

 
At the end you will know the whole story of Sarah and where she has gone. I was sorry to find the final answer but thoroughly enjoyed the experience of tracking her movements and learning of her. I am not sure whether we would have liked each other if we did meet.

The Town will be there until January . Put it on your bucket list.  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA12/152/92/21

Gemma Cleanslate

Death Picks a Winner

By Gemma Cleanslate

The theater at New Toulouse is deceiving. It is empty however the poster on the wall says that “Death Picks a Winner… is Now Playing “and it is starring ME! The darkened screen invited me to click and when I did I received a hud to wear that will take me through clues to solve a mystery and where to go to find clues. Evidently the prospective campaigning Mayor has been murdered and I am elected to find out who did it!  There is also a missing news boy in the mix. My first visit was to a pub so I ordered a rum and chatted up the barmaid who was very cooperative and pointed me on to the next locale to find another clue.

 I have been here in this quaint town I recall for a parade on Mardi Gras. It is a lovely site with charming buildings and appointments. I walked around a bit to renew my memories of the shops and homes before continuing on my investigation. I stopped in the little church and at the impressive Town Hall square to admire the fountain. “New Toulouse Bayou is a private estate community based on the American city of New Orleans, Louisiana, and its surrounding environs in the first 25 years of the 20th century. (1900-1925)” is the description of the region.

 My next stop was at the campaign headquarters which was in disarray with the loss of their candidate but a glum campaign worker sent me on my way. I picked up some campaign materials as a souvenir. I found a lost sock and followed the boy who had dropped it from his basket on the way to the laundry. At the laundry I helped out a bit while I searched for the next clue. The story is getting more involved. You will have to follow it all for yourselves.

My sixth clue was hidden in voodoo shop near the cemetery that was so interesting and informative I spent a long time exploring that building which is chuck full of information and history about the religion of voodoo and Gullah.  I almost forgot I was there to find a further clue to the mystery. That one was not easy!

As I moved along on search of the clues I picked up so many little gifts. I had tea, and coffee, delicious jambalaya, fruit, great Cuban cigar, Bacardi and more.  I even acquired a circus tent and some buildings from the town.! I sat down for a few minutes with Liza Veliz, and had a beer with her as she filled me in on the region. I learned that the mastermind behind the mysteries here is Nikita Weyman and the scripter for all is Mosley Sperber. They were assisted by a myriad of others that you will learn about at the end of your quest.   I am still on my mission and have a few more clues to track down before I solve this mystery. The hud records all the completed clues and earns you prizes at the end where you will find out the secrets of the Death.  I highly recommend this fun. The mystery clues probably won’t take you as long as they did me but I was distracted by all the fascinating décor and stopped to check out everything I saw. If you would like to find out more about New Toulouse you can visit this website http://www.newtoulouse.org/   I look forward to more mysteries!

 Come on over and ramble through the clues with your honey, friend, or alone. I would say this is a winner! You have until May 30.  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/New%20Toulouse%20Bayou/159/10/602

Gemma Cleanslate

Review of Madpea's "Buried"

By Kiirya Lii

 As far as easter-egg hunts go, Buried is one of the best, and one of the worst of the genre. You begin as an amateur geocacher ... using GPS coordinates to hunt down little trinkets and doodads for sport and entertainment ... just like the protagonist of our story. Introducing Lily Morano, an famous author who got a little too invested in geocaching ... and is now missing. Her husband Joshua Morano is offering anyone who can find her a whopping $500,000.

That's where you come in. After forking over the 300L for the HUD, which that alone is difficult enough to understand until you realize it's an overhead view of the entire mesh of the sim. Then you embark on a mysterious adventure ... or so you think. The first clue is an interesting find. You wonder around the isle until you come upon some clues that lead you to Lilys iPad. (Lilypad, for those who miss the joke.) After some decent voice acting and an interesting plot twist, you're suddenly teleported to a shop.

At this shop, you're likely to spend anywhere from twenty minutes to a couple hours searching for a tiny geo capsule whose only purpose is to give you a tiny sense of immersion. As one player put it, whose name will be left out to protect anonymity,  "Thrusting people into a resource-intensive sim without any indication of what they're supposed to be looking for? Genius."

After a few of these you start to realize the story is more of an afterthought while advertising and exposure is the true point of this whole game. You just paid someone to tell you buy items.

"But Kiirya!" you say, "There are prizes!" Yes! I tell you, albeit a bit sarcastically, Have you seen them? For the amount of work involved with finding just a FEW capsules, let alone TWENTY-FIVE, I personally feel the end does not justify the means. From what I understand, on each "level", shop and sim owners had the say on where they would hide the capsule. Some were very clever, others were like finding a purple elephant in a white room.

This lack of consistency in ascending or descending difficulty is another reason I am not fond of this game. Besides the progressing story, you don't feel like you're making any progress. By capsule six, you feel more like a parent observing their child's magic trick for the thousandth time and less like a rising geocacher on the adventure of a lifetime. The coordination required for this game non existent. One would assume they didn't communicate much during the development stage.

The games saving grace comes in the form of friendly faces sharing your adventure. The madpea group the you join in correlation with starting the game is filled with wonderful, helpful and willing people. In fact I believe it's safe to assume that without this group, a large majority of players simply wouldn't progress enough to find the encouragement to keep playing until the end. This game is infuriating, welcoming, annoying, and wonderful. Regardless of my obvious negative opinions of the game, I would STILL recommend you go out and get it, if for nothing else other than the wonderful community you encounter while embarking on this adventure.

Kiirya Lii

Death in the Desert

 By Grey Lupindo

If you like riddles and mysteries, the new “Death in the Desert” site should be on your list of go-to places.    It opened October 1^st and will remain open until October 31^st.   The site was created by Slueth-Sayers Builders and is located at Death in the Desert, Fun and Games (130, 20, 22)

The mystery is that that Edmund Mallory, a great archaeologist but perhaps a not-so-great person, is missing.  He has lots of enemies, including rival archaeologists, shady businessmen, government agents, and even his own son.   There are notecards which give you the background on the historic site, as well as a few bare facts about Mallory.  After the original investigator was promoted to a position with INTERPOL, a new agent—you-- is assigned to the case.  To make matters more interesting, the evidence that the first Investigator found has been stolen from the police evidence locker.    

Since I love hunts and mysteries, this seemed like a perfect challenge for me.    The locale is beautiful, too:  an Egyptian market surrounded by the desert, the Nile, a pyramid, and lovely oasis waterfalls.    

The first problem I faced was too high a script count.   To its credit, the sim keeps lag down by keeping scripted avi’s at bay.    Warning messages told me how many scripts I needed to lose or risk being sent home.   It took a bit, but I finally got my weight down without shedding too many clothes.

You are instructed to first go to the police station to meet Police Chief Fasir.   This is easy since there is a large sign.  At the police station you receive a Case File filed with photos of the main suspects, interview notes, clues and other items.   You are then sent out to investigate. 

To work the case you will need to look in every shop and back alley.   As you hunt you’ll find some freebies as well as some beautiful items for sale.   I picked up some free clothing, lots of snacks, and a few other fun items.   The goods for sale range from beautiful furniture to inexpensive trinkets.   My favorite furniture item was an inlaid desk with drawers that open and close.   My favorite fun item was a pool of blood on the floor, which was for sale for $30L.   I passed up buying either item, but I may go back after that desk.

 There’s also a train and a boat to ride, both of which were fun and passed by sites where you might find clues.  I hopped off once or twice, but when I stayed off too long the train left without me.   It was a long, dry walk back to the market.  

After receiving the case file, I snooped around and soon found informant Badru Fayad.   I collected some evidence off of him, including a pick axe and shovel.  Then I was off to dig up more clues.

As soon as I found my first person, I was able to access the interview sheet.   I quickly realized I was going to have to gather all of the basic information before I could solve the crime, just like a RL detective should do.   Once all of the evidence is gathered, the rules tell you to take your time solving the mystery.  If you guess wrong, you have to start all over gathering the clues again.  

So far I’ve found four of the people I need to interview and lots of evidence, including a potentially useful recipe for poison.   I’ve filled up on snacks and Skeleton Cake, too.   In short, I had a great time.

The names of the ace detectives who have already solved the puzzle are listed at the entrance.  My name isn’t there yet, but I’m working on it.

 Fun and Games (130, 20, 22)


Grey Lupindo