[0:23] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast for the Haunted Attraction Entertainment community, whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we return to you this week humble, because for the first time in 450 plus episodes, we missed a week last week. Yeah. I would have done a redux, but we heard you guys' feedback. You don't like the reduxes. I'm going to save the reduxes for when there's a situation that calls for it. Yeah like an event calls for it makes it appropriate to revisit an episode but yes we decided we would heed your advice and miss and it it hurt my soul a little bit but i do think i do agree it was the correct thing to do but we had valid reasons there was a lot going on around the time we normally would publish and we'll talk more about it in a minute, but we were under the gun of Hurricane Francine last week. So we're going to talk about the storm, we're going to talk about the work we did in our haunt this past two weeks, and we're going to talk about a mobile game. Yeah.

[1:33] It's called Happy Escape Tycoon, probably the worst name. Yeah, it's the worst name for the type of game it is. Yeah, well, we're going to get into that. But definitely, if none of that strikes your fancy, like I said, there's over 450 other Go ahead and check them out at HauntWeekly.com, Haunt Weekly on Twitter, Haunt Weekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash Haunt Weekly.

[1:54] All right.

[1:57] So, we got to catch the nice folks up. Okay. On Wednesday, September 11th, we were paid a little visit by Hurricane Francine in the area. Not so much New Orleans itself, more in the area. Yeah. But we do need to go back a little bit to Sunday, because in addition to the last car trouble, we popped a tire. Yeah, and the popping the tire thing is sad, because the reason, and I did it, I'm just going to own it. I did it. But in my defense, the reason I popped the tire was because I was trying to find an alternate way home to avoid the pothole that could have popped my tire on the street near our house. Yes, exactly. Did I get that about right? Yeah. So, I managed, in trying to avoid one potentially dangerous pothole, find another one street over. Yeah. This is New Orleans in a nutshell. New Orleans residential area, specifically. It's like, New Orleans is like the French Quarter. Places where tourists are fine. The roads are immaculate. They're fine. They're beautiful. When you get into the actual residential areas, the lunar rovers couldn't get over some of this crap. Yeah. That skateboard we sent to Mars going, fuck this.

[3:14] But, yeah, so I popped a tire, and then remember how the previous episode we talked about how everything on the Ford Fiesta is a special snowflake? Yes. Including the battery terminal? So are the tires. Yes, so when we took it to get it fixed on Monday, dropped it off. No, Tuesday. We took it to get it fixed on Tuesday. No, we did it on Monday. You're right. We did it Monday. You're right. It was Monday. You're right. You're right. Yeah.

[3:38] So Monday, we took it. We dropped it off first thing in the morning. Got a text at 11 saying the car was ready to pick up. Couldn't go right then. Went in the afternoon, picked it up. And the pop tire was still in the back. The donut was still on the car. Yeah, the donut was on the car and the tire that was popped was in the hatchback. And I want to say I'm proud of us. Because even though swapping over the spare was a stressful thing, and something we've never done on this car we've done it on other vehicles right but every car has got its own weird quirks with the shit I found um.

[4:12] So getting a jack on it, and I've got to say the free jack we got with that car has to be the worst jack in the fucking world. I think they always are. I think that's a rule. Yeah. But we got it. We got it changed without really taking that long or any real arguments or any tension. It was actually a fairly smooth process to get the spare on. It's just everything that happened after that was a fucking nightmare. And it was really bad because sometime Monday through Wednesday. State, it sometimes depends, is when we do our usual grocery shopping. Yeah. And by Monday, there was a pretty, by Monday afternoon especially, there was a fairly clear indication that the storm was coming nearby, at least. At that time, I think they were still saying it was Baton Rouge, Lafayette area, further to the west, but it was coming somewhere in the region. And so we're like, okay, we'll take care of a little bit of grocery shopping that we have to do. We were thinking pretty much normal stuff. Yeah. We were going to look for Oktoberfest beer, because it's that time, and a few other things. But we were thinking fairly normal purchases, weekly purchases. We get to the front of Walmart, and it is a zoo of panic buying. Yeah. I have never seen it like that in New Orleans. Yeah, we went to the front in order to look at the Halloween decorations. Yeah. Saw the line and got scared and got the fuck out. Yeah, we just fled. Yeah. We fled. And so we've been down to one car now. Supposedly, we're recording this on Monday. It'll be probably posted on Tuesday. We're making Tuesday our post day. Yeah. For various reasons.

[5:40] But supposedly on tomorrow morning it will be um the tire is going to be there and we have an appointment to actually get it fixed and we'll have to claim our roadside hazard warranty and get it reimbursed and it's going to be a headache because that was the problem is they didn't have the tire even though we balled the tires there yeah, And supposedly, when we bought our tires, and we had them ordered from, like, Walmart.com and never shipped in. Supposedly, we had, like, they shipped, like, a dozen of them. They were bitching about how many of those tires they got. Yeah. We only ordered four. Not our fault. I very clearly put four in the box, you know, little quantity box.

[6:20] So, I don't know why the fuck you got, like, you know, enough to cover a fleet of Fiestas. But anyway, so that headache was going on. And then the storm hit. That was Monday. day and then the storm kept tracking further east and honest to god i mean the end result for us is no damage to people or property right we have there's a leak in my office window that um has been there for a while in some capacity but became very difficult to ignore with the sideways rain.

[6:53] Um yeah it's the first time i've seen it leak i've seen i have not actually seen it leak but I have seen evidence of it. Yeah. So. I thought it was just humidity getting through that window, though, because that's a New Orleans saying, and these are old windows. Yeah. Humidity is going to get in sometimes. Yeah, so eventually we're going to have that expensive repair on our hands. Yeah. And we're looking to redo. But we've been, it's been on our wish list for some time to redo all the windows on the house. We wanted to redo all the windows, redo all the flooring, and get the foundation re-locked or rhino-locked or whatever. Yeah. Those are the big wishes we've had for our house. We just never... The stars have not aligned to do any of them. So we're going to...

[7:36] We're going to do all that later. But, yeah, so that's the storm in a nutshell for us. We lost power for 25 hours. But Ellie's store had power. Right. So once it was safe to do so, we just moved to the store.

[7:51] And it was actually a pretty okay experience. Yeah. All things considered, I mean, it was hot. Obviously, yeah. Well, I mean, not obviously. Usually after a hurricane, we get like a couple of days of beautiful weather. Yeah, well, and the storm rained until like four or five in the morning. So we couldn't open the windows in the house. Otherwise, a lot more water would get in. Yeah, because even though we, A, didn't get the actual center part of the storm, it passed between us and Baton Rouge, basically. We were on the rainy side. Yeah. But not the windy side. Right. But it was frustrating. We lost power. only about half the city lost power though. Yeah. It seemed to be at a 50-50 split. Yeah a lot of our friends who normally lose power did not. So that's good news. And a lot of our friends who do, who normally don't lose power did. So yeah it's it was kind of it was very random who lost and who did not have power. Like I said even though Ellie's store is about a mile away that whole area had power ours didn't. Yeah. It was It was very, very touch and go there. So we had to deal with that. All the while, we've only realistically got one car because you don't want to drive on the spare too much.

[9:10] Yeah, so it was a storm. It was not Ida. It was not that one. It was not some of the other worse ones we've had. No. There was not a whole lot of cleanup afterwards. If you'll recall, I don't know how episode it would be, but when we talked about Hurricane Ida coming through, we had the tree in the backyard that looked like it was about to collapse on the house. We had to pay to get that taken care of. That tree is still there, but it is not a problem. It has not moved. Right. And all of the big pieces of it are on the other side of the property line. Yeah. We had our guy trim everything he could legally. Yep. Like, you're the expert. You know the laws in this area. Do everything you can to make sure that sumbitch doesn't hit my house or garage.

[10:00] So, yeah. Anyways, it was a storm. We got through it. But it was a lot of stress. us and one of the things that was stressful for me going back to the walmart thing i wasn't too worried about the storm i mean i figured you'd probably lose power for a bit yeah i wasn't so worried about the storm i was but everybody else was freaking the fuck out yeah and i don't know why this was the storm it's just that time of year i think some of it's been a long time i think ida was rougher for some people than it was even for us yeah i mean i don't i mean yeah is it rough being without power for almost a week absolutely but at some point you get kind of used to a little house on the prairie lifestyle and yeah you just kind of come to terms with it but yeah so i understand like a lot of people are dealing with that shit but man the city lost its fucking mind monday afternoon through tuesday day i mean i went out first thing tuesday morning to go get a few odds and ends and wednesday morning right no i thought it was tuesday morning it was the day after oh yeah yeah you're right it was tuesday morning and we're.

[11:08] Like that's the last time we're leaving the house because not so not because the storm's coming imminently it didn't come till wednesday late afternoon early evening really but we were very worried about other people being absolutely batshit insane and it was crazy out there yeah and it was also a weird experience for me because this is the first time with the new job and the first time I've had to work or work through a storm because I'm not sure what the policies are yet and I wasn't sure who to ask so and it's a small business there may not even be a policy.

[11:43] Let's be realistic, right? Yeah. When you're dealing with a business, I mean, it's a big business in terms of dollar amount, but it's small in terms of number of employees. Yeah. Like actual employees, not contractors. Who knows? That's what it comes down to. Yeah. All right. But we will say that we were at least somewhat productive. Yes. With the haunt. We'll move on from that.

[12:02] We actually did a lot on the haunt since the last time we spoke.

[12:07] The first thing we did was a purchase we should have made a long, long, long time ago. I think this is probably my most regretted purchase. In fact, I've been kind of, I think of an episode about, you know, haunt build shit we wish we knew when we started. Yeah. I think we might have done one like that, but I think it's time for an update if we have. Yeah, we did one on avoiding crappy tools, basically. Yeah, and that's one of the things I want to get out there is avoid, you know, certain tools. But one of the things I would definitely put on that list now if we do it again is getting a good fan. Yeah. An emphasis on the word good. Now, we didn't need a huge fan, but we needed a good one. And we got one from Home Depot. It still costs us like $150, and it moves so much air. It does. Yeah, we were going to get the one size smaller, but they were sold out. And that would probably have been fine. Yeah. But, so we got a little bit overkill, but it does move so much air, and it's so much more bearable there, even when you're not in the direct path of the heat, because you're not dealing with stagnant air. It's moving around just so much better in there. So that was a very, very good purchase. We also got new shop lights. Yes, because one of ours had fallen, and then there was a section of the haunt that was always dark. Yeah. So we picked up two.

[13:28] Um, we did a lot of cleaning inside the haunt, including where the dog shit on the fucking floor. Yeah. All of that's gone. Mercifully. Yeah. But I think what honestly may wind up being the most important thing we did is organizing the tools. Yeah.

[13:48] Yeah. It took a long time. Yeah. We had three separate toolboxes, um, just stuff randomly thrown in. Yeah. Yeah, with no rhyme or reason, purely chaotic. And the thing is, like, we probably had a rhyme or reason at one point. We haven't done this probably in a decade. Yeah, it's been a while. And the result of that is whatever rhyme or reason we started with was no longer in effect. Yeah. And so we went to Dollar Tree. We got some organizing boxes that are clear.

[14:22] And now I feel like I know where all of the fucking tools are. And basically we've been doing this we made some discoveries we own i'm shitting you not 20 different markers right for marking wood and thing marking cuts we own 20 markers we own eight tape measures that's because every time we put it down we can't find it we just go and buy another one eight tape measures oh and by the way new discovery today i found a fourth staple There's a staple puller in my office. Yeah, a fourth staple puller. I think there's five or six pairs of utility scissors. Oh, God, yeah, so many tin snips. Oh, no, the regular plastic. Just the regular scissors. Yeah, yeah, and we own probably about the same amount of tin snips. And an entire tackle, not tackle box, toolbox, small toolbox full of duct tape. Of all colors and varieties.

[15:19] Wow. Like, we made some discoveries of shit we had bought. It was also throwing away a lot. Bits and elements had been corroded. Some duplicate of tools that were not in good condition. Some things that we just didn't know what the fuck they were. Like, I don't, like, I don't, I have no idea of why we bought a nail punch. I know what a nail punch does. Yeah. But I don't know why we have it. Yeah, I don't know either. Like, I don't know what we were thinking with it, because we're purely screw-based. Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah, and that was another important thing, you know, getting all the impact driver bits in one place. Yeah. So we have our Phillips and our Torx bits and everything. Oh my God. It made the work we did after that so much easier. It really did. We were not battling against finding every goddamn tool. And it's good because the work we did was frustrating the fuck enough on its own. It didn't need any help pissing me off. It did not. Because, okay, we've got to go way back to the past.

[16:22] And because on the exit run of her haunt... On this side of the garage has the hot water heater, some storage, an old sink, and the washer and dryer.

[16:34] Yeah, and an old stove. And an old stove. That is probably not good at all. And that line, that gas line has been capped for like 25 years now.

[16:43] But anyways, all that stuff's on that side of the garage. And we put up walls to protect it and also so that we could paint and decorate and have our own thing and also have storage behind it. And overall that system has worked great with one problem we built it at very different intervals in our hot life yeah um the section there's the exit door i think we built at least 12 years ago probably longer i think longer yeah because and after taking that apart and the section we built over the washer dryer which is was much much newer and much better built and much more correctly built um however it still wasn't very well built because if someone hit it hard enough they could move the walls it wouldn't damage anything behind it but they could move the walls uh they collided hard enough and so we decided to finally finally get everything flat and flush and correct yes we were able to get it level in new orleans yeah that's impressive we wanted to get this done right so that a we had access to everything b we were 100 sure we were ada compliant because one of the problems with the old way was it actually covered up part of the exit door if it wasn't like super perfectly shut it would actually cover up part of the exit door.

[18:06] And c make sure that no one was going to damage people or property if they hit it, and yeah basically that meant we had to take apart the shit we did like i said a decade or plus ago and find out that we just were terrible idiots then yeah like the way we did that i knew there was jank involved that was way more jank than i'm comfortable with so what we did is we got the two old walls down and the washer dryer walls the newer ones have been properly secured they will not move now right they ain't going anywhere now um and now we have once we're able to get back out there. We're going to affix the old walls to the newer ones, the correct ones, and have an actual exit path that will give us access to the storage area. And here's a fun fact, access to our fucking light switches. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't had actual access to our internal hot light switches for probably a decade. Not regular or reliable access, at least. No, because we just screwed the door shut. Because all of these walls are doors. Yeah, all four of the walls. Actually, five if you count the one in front of the tools. They're all doors. The whole run is doors. And so we have access to it. But unfortunately, the way we built it, we didn't actually give ourselves access to stuff. It was very janky, very wrong, and we just have not dealt with it because it's never been like a showstopper problem.

[19:35] Now we're taking the time to deal with it, and I'm feeling much better about that exit path because of that. Me too. And we are going to be able to put in that extra scare at the end. Yes. And it gives us room for another scare, possibly, either animatronic or human, depending on how we want to go about it. Depending on how many people we have. Exactly. That's the other thing. Yes. But, no, we've got a good thing there. So I'm very, very happy with the work we did, even though, as you noted at the bar after we stopped for the night, that we've worked for all these hours and we have less haunt than we started.

[20:07] Yeah. Well, you know, we have, you know, less than 45 working days until we open. So not a problem.

[20:17] I'm still not too worried. Well, that brings us to the last question of the week that we actually asked people. Which was how was your haunt season shaping up okay guys normally this is where i go so and so said blah blah blah this person said blah blah blah this person said blah blah blah and then we do this whole thing we have a little banter about it we're not gonna do that this time no because basically speaking uh i can't even read most of the comments because so many of them were just gifs about being panicked or stressed or sad or frustrated yeah that about it yeah and And it's like, I know how Elmo felt on Twitter when he asked what everyone was doing and got trauma dumped on. Yeah. I got a little taste of that because it's like, oh, wow, I thought we were having it rough. You know? Yeah. It seems we're actually doing pretty well compared to... Yeah, like 80% of the answers were all stressed and not ready or behind schedule. Nowhere near, yeah. Yeah, and one person posted the gif of the guy that walks in with the pizzas and the whole room's on fire. Yeah.

[21:23] Other people posted their hair running around on fire, things like that. Yeah. Basically, it turned into a giant gif battle of we're all panicking, and this is fine. Yeah, and then the last 10% were opening that weekend, so they had to be ready or else, you know? Yeah, so... There was no in-between, really. You know, and speaking while we're on this particular topic, though, a shout-out to our friends. at Decomposed Haunted House. They are out there in Houma, which was much more directly in the path of the hurricane than we were. Right. They sustained... I've gotten mixed reports from them on the damage. Yeah, they are out there. They've brought in some of their crew, and they've been working all weekend because they opened this coming weekend, I think. Is it the 28th? No, they opened the 28th. They opened the weekend after. They have another weekend.

[22:15] Yeah, they got hit pretty hard. Their ticket booth and other areas were completely destroyed, and there was some damage to the haunt itself. They are actively working on repairing. Guys, we're thinking about you. We love you. Hope you're able to get everything fixed. We extended an offer to go help if needed. We have not been asked. And I understand we're realistically not close enough to provide much help. Right. We're about 90 minutes away from them. But, hey, if they called, I'd be there. You know, I'm just saying. and I'd stop what I'm doing because, man, we're haunters and this is how we operate. Yep. Like I know that when 13th Gate flooded, no, when House of Shock flooded, huh? Rise flooded. Oh, Rise flooded, 13th Gate brought the blower motors over to dry it out. This is what we do. We're a community. And when House of Shock was destroyed by one storm or had this facade destroyed, haunters from all the other haunts came and helped rebuild. Yeah. This is what we do. And that's one of the things I love about this community is we fight and we thrive in the face of adversity.

[23:18] Okay, well, all of that, and we still have got to come. Oh, wait, this week's question of the week.

[23:24] We are planning tentatively a trip to Kansas City first week of October. So we'll be talking more about that probably next week. Yeah, so we're already way behind on this episode. This episode's already going long. But when do we go to Kansas City? Where should we go? Yeah, so basically we're going from New Orleans to St. Louis with a stop, but a detour over to Kansas City first. We will be in that area the 3rd, which is a Thursday, and the 4th.

[23:59] Um, I'm not sure about the 5th. I think the 5th is going to be a travel to St. Louis. Yeah, because the baby shower is the 6th, correct? Yep, exactly. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, what haunts should we see, especially Friday, October 4th in Kansas City? Please let us know. Hauntweekly.com, Hauntweekly on Twitter or X or whatever. Hauntweekly on Facebook and YouTube.com slash Hauntweekly. All right, and all the chaos. I, uh, did not update the conference reminders. Well, we're already 25 minutes into the episode. Yeah, and honestly, there's not that much going on until November anyway. So let's move on. We'll skip conference reminders this week. Sorry if you were, like, super eager to get into conference reminders.

[24:41] But as you noted, we're halfway done with the episode time-wise anyway. So let's talk about a mobile game. Yes. Now, I'm going to be honest. I have not played it. and I've not played it for a very specific reason that we'll get into in a minute. I've tried a few times. I just can't. Yeah. And, but basically the game is Happy Escape Tycoon, which is not an accurate title. It is not. And Ellie recommended this to us as a cute, haunty house, um, idle game. Yeah. And we don't usually play idle games. Like, occasionally we'll get into one. Yeah, like we got into the Trailer Park Boys Dirty Money game for a while there, but then we got out.

[25:27] Yeah, and I played like, let's see, what was it? Adventure Capitalist slash Adventure Communist. Yeah. Those, I played those for a bit. I mean, they're fun, they're fine, but I just, yeah, I struggle to get too deep into them past a certain point. Right. Yeah, but the basic premise of this one is that you open an escape room. I forget how you open it is this with friends or family or an inheritance some bullshit reason you you open an escape room Reason yes, insert your your reason here and it starts you out with a shitty upgrade up a shitty setup city yes, and then you have to upgrade it and get better gameplay better graphics all of that stuff so it's your typical idle game yeah um and it yeah it follows the formula that everyone's familiar with with these types of games um but there is one very important thing to notice and this is what has prevented me from comfortably playing it yeah is it requires a great deal of reading, and if you do not have a large screen uh-huh is very difficult to read large screen or young eyes.

[26:39] I um i i got lasik when i was 29 and i'm in my mid-40s now and so i've gotten over a decade and a half of perfect vision but more in the recent years i've needed readers for some things but even with my readers some of this text is very hard to read and I just couldn't struggle through it now Ellie said there was a way to zoom in yeah I think that might be an accessibility feature on the phone not in the game itself but we really struggle when we both have iPhone 13s yeah admittedly I Ellie's got like what the iPhone 14 Pro Max or I don't know if she's got a phablet so needless to say she had no issues with reading when she played it But we we did and for me in particular it was rough and it was kind of a deal-breaker for me I just couldn't I'm sitting there like at the bar or the restaurant trying to play it And just constantly squitting evil with my glasses on yeah now. I will say that I.

[27:40] Once you get all of the prompts, the answers and the position of the answers don't change. So once you get the right answer, you can just keep getting the right answer without having to read. But that's going to come up later, too. Yeah. So, yeah. But like a lot of these types of games, you are given tasks. It has sort of a story mode. Why don't you describe it? Yeah. Yeah, you're given tasks and you want to pay attention to them because it'll tell you you need to put this type of scare or trap here because it's not really an escape room. They call it an escape room, but it's not really.

[28:24] And you can get it wrong and then you have to sell stuff back at a less price than what you paid for it. And that's a whole thing too. Basically, follow whatever they ask you to build. Yeah. At least take a look at it because I didn't. Yeah. And you want those bonuses for completing those tasks. You want to keep advancing the story to get access to better, newer and better stuff, too. Right. And that's how you can also earn money and unlock characters. And you earn money by scaring customers. Customers and it you know it's pretty good and that you eventually open up five different attractions for the residents which are your customers to go through the horror hospital the spooky graves creepy castle haunted campus and the moss mouth yeah and for the record we don't know if we're reading moss mouth right yeah we both sat here looking at it before right before we started recording to make sure that that was it and we both agree that's what it spells yeah, but i but this could be another case of the text is too goddamn goddamn small for us to see yeah it could be.

[29:40] So, setting up a room. Mm-hmm. Yeah, basically, if you've played a tower defense game, you've got the premise. Customers go through a path. Yep. And you have to set up scares along that path. The better you scare them, the more money you get, the better the scares you get by, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. It's a self-feeding positive cycle in theory. Yeah, and they call them terror devices.

[30:04] You know, I'm just going to say this now. Now, this game does sound like a really fun haunted attraction simulation game. Simulation in super air quotes, for the record. But a simulation type game. But, dear God, is all the terminology wrong. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm wondering, like, we didn't look at, did we see who's developed this? No. Because I bet English is not their first language. I have no idea. I'm just going to wager because this sounds... But, yeah, I mean, you don't see, so there are some escape rooms that have, like, actors and. Oh, yeah, there's definitely horror escape rooms. Yeah. But they're not, you don't have a walkthrough of it, or you. And it's not the, you know, it's not the goal to be scared. The goal is still be able to win.

[30:57] Yeah, but. Yeah. So, yeah, each station only gives you two choices, so that helps you out. If you have one, go for the other one. If you use the same choice throughout, the rooms get a lower rating because there is a rating that goes into effect and it can be less effective. You will get less scares the more boring your level is. Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. If you repeat scares, you do the same thing over and over again, it loses its effectiveness. Yeah, and that's something we've talked about here you know for real hunts yeah it makes sense but variety sorry I'm still you're trying to figure it out yeah anyway but yeah so you know there's also some strategy involved in where what type of scare to put where because there are eerie ones there are jump scares there are.

[31:56] In last scares, which are usually bigger and more effective. Which also is part of haunt tactics, the idea of you want that last scare to push them out, to clean them out. Especially if your exit line is visible to your queue line. Yeah. You really want them to go running out. Right. Because that hypes up the people in the queue line. Exactly. If you don't have them where they're visible, the layout doesn't permit that. It's a different thing. Yeah. Now, one thing they do have in it that we don't see in haunts and probably shouldn't see are projectiles.

[32:32] Where you throw, the scares basically throw like ghosts and stuff at the customers. Well, theoretically, I can throw ghosts at anybody I want. They won't know I'm hitting them with ghosts. Exactly. I mean, right now, a ghost could be giving you a lap dance. You wouldn't have any idea. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Spooky lap dance. Dance, spooky lap, dance. I think Ghostbusters, the first one, covered. Yeah. Oh, I think he knew what was going on in that scene, though. More time on the map means more time to deplete the scarometer, which is what runs customers off, and they fling money at you as they run. Yeah, why don't customers fling money at us as they run? Sometimes they drop candy. I'll take that as payment.

[33:20] Um and terror devices can be upgraded to max levels i think there's four or five levels to each one um and how upgraded it is affects your rating because everything's about the rating of your rooms and for some reason you can get more than 100 room rating but that's neither here nor there hello never mind i've got like 106 on one of them.

[33:56] Christ my math teachers are probably rolling over in their grave right now and some of them aren't even dead yeah my god that's 106 then again that's how i did a lot of tests yeah bonus credit baby so you also have an option of adding scare actors to the stations and the scare actor mechanic is actually really interesting and it does increase your rating again because it adds variety and humans always at the end of the day are better than props yep in terms of actually getting a response from other humans exactly and and a lot of that like we talked about it before on the show but a lot of it's just because a prop will always do the the same thing every time until it breaks it will do the same thing every time and humans can adapt can adjust they can adapt if they realize something isn't working they can adapt for a particular group they can adjust for group size group age whatever that adaptability makes humans better typically now that said props don't need to be paid and don't really take days off and you won't catch them in the bathroom smoking a joint when they're supposed to be on the floor working but But that's neither here nor there.

[35:13] We're talking about the result for the customers. Yeah, and as you scare, you'll notice a little bottle at the bottom fill up until you get a little ghosty guy. And that is for a little mini-merge game that you play in order to get level-ups that you can't get otherwise for your scares. Okay, so there's multiple currencies, is what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. Which is very common in these types of games, for the record. That's not a unique thing. Oh yeah, you can't, there's three?

[35:46] Three types of currencies so there's that there's the so there's the ghost there's money there's um id badges id badges are how you hire your scare actors unless you want to watch ads to do it because this does have ads be careful because they will flip on that was one of the things that was really annoying and almost turned me off to the game is that it will say do you want to double the money you've gotten while you were gone by watching an ad, and then they change where the position of the buttons are to cancel. They flip those around. So be aware of that. Yeah, and given that we've already discussed how I personally found the game almost impossible to read and view, that's not going to help my issue any, is it? No.

[36:40] But yeah, the idea is obviously that you get, as you get better actors, better scares, your effectiveness improves as long as you keep mixing that with the aforementioned tactics of using different things, giving people variety, and then giving the customers what they specifically want slash need. Right.

[37:03] Yeah. Yeah, and for the scare actors, you recruit them and you start off being able to recruit base-level scare actors. They do gain experience and become more effective at scaring as you level them up. Makes sense. It does. You can also increase, every once in a while they will suggest a leveled-up character already for you. Though and it will even say this would be a good end scare actor you know to try to help you place them appropriately and they have different skills and are associated with the different terror traps or the different types of here so yeah much like in a haunt you have maybe a different person for a vocal role than a drop panel role exactly different types of actors in the game exactly, Yeah, I still don't know why this is called Happy Escape Tycoon. Because there are puzzles in it, and the people have to actually stop and solve the puzzle. And so you have to position your scares around the puzzle pieces, so that they're getting hit with scares the entire time they're trying to solve the puzzle.

[38:13] Okay, so it's just one component of it, though. Yeah. Because, also, why is it Happy Escape Tycoon, not Horror Escape Tycoon? I don't know, because they thought people would run away from that. I don't know.

[38:27] Yeah, it is definitely a misnomer. Yeah, I'm sorry. It just really confuses me. Yeah, and then eventually you will also get offered bosses for each level, and the boss runs the entire rooms. Like having a lieutenant, basically. Exactly. Or an actor manager. Yeah, basically you're getting the equivalent of that middle management person so that you're not having to handle everything yourself. Which, once again, this very closely mirrors how haunts grow organically and how they work. You know, a lot of haunts, and I've seen it. You know, like I remember going to 13th Gate New Orleans Nightmare and seeing a lot of their early work that they still had there and seeing how they grew from that.

[39:13] So, yeah, it's part of how you grow. you get better you get knowledge you get better understanding you get better things and it's obviously very gamified where obviously in a real haunted house you don't always know like sometimes and we've had this experience and all we thought we leveled up a scare yeah well we actually did was nerf it horribly yeah we fucked it up and that's happened plenty of times to us so obviously it's not reality is it's not linear um you can go backwards which doesn't seem to be a thing here but basically yeah i i like this idea of trying to take the experience of growing a haunt from one person and a bunch of random bs automated scares into an actor-driven tycoon haunt where you are hiring managers and hiring people to run certain zones and things that's very much how hunters dream to grow yeah and eventually you do get a manager to um to automatically run the games for you so that you don't have to sit there and like send the next group but the but there is spacing involved with it like you can send multiple groups in at a time there's throughput conversations there's throughput conversations you have to talk you have to know when to send it in and how long your traps take to reset before you send the next rip in or they won't get all the scares.

[40:42] Yeah. And that'll hurt your rating. That'll hurt your money and that'll slow down your ability to grow. Exactly. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but since this is an idle game, I'm assuming there's no real way to like lose progress. Yes. Not that I know of, no. Other than if you did like I did and didn't pay attention. Well, yeah. But you still didn't lose progress. You just had to rebuy things. Yeah. Sell and get the money to rebuy. Yeah. So you don't go backwards, though, that much. Especially if you pay attention to what you're supposed to be buying and what your objectives are. And I actually really enjoy those types of games because they're very relaxing. Yeah. It's not, because there's no lose state. There's no fail state is what I'm trying to get at. You're never going to be in a situation where all the work you did is borked and useless. No, no, no. You just got to restart and move on. Yeah, no. You might have not made the progress you wanted to make. You might not have made it as fast as you thought you were going to make it or wanted to make it. But you're not going to lose. Right. That's what I'm trying to hit on. Because, like I said, those types of games, like Power Wash Simulator does it. Mm-hmm. And also Crime Scene Cleaner. We talked about that game recently. Right. Where there's no real fail state. You don't lose.

[41:58] You just kind of maybe don't achieve your goals as fast as you'd like. Yeah. And that's a very different type of thing. Right. All right, next up. All right, next up are the customers. There are several residents. You can find all of the information about the different types of scares, the residents, and all the mechanics in the handbook at the top left corner of the screen. that is tiny print and you will need glasses. Or some way to zoom in or a big phone. Maybe this is an iPad game. Maybe. But yeah, but the normals are...

[42:35] Are scares that you are people that are just normal customers and who are influenced by people, other people in line who are special characters. And you can have multiple special characters in each group going through. For example, there's a tough guy and it takes them a little bit longer to scare. Now, we all know that the big buff guys usually scare pretty easy. They scare easy and, man, you know, if you've got to pretend to be tough, the jig's up. Yeah, but he's got a sturdier life bar.

[43:15] So there's that. There's an older patron who has high myopia. Myopia. Myopia. Meaning nearsightedness. Yes. And he misses scares because he can't see them unless you put them right in his path. You know, what I have and what makes me difficult to read the game. Yeah. Yeah. But that was the actual terminology from the game. Yeah. There's a neighborhood aunt who is a skeptic because she doesn't understand that this isn't supposed to be about real ghosts. This is an entertainment establishment. So she sits there and talks throughout the entire walkthrough and distracts your guests and makes it harder for you to scare all the people around her. What a twat, And then we've all seen Speedy, the one that runs straight through and doesn't stop for anything. Yeah, and, you know, Speedy, our haunt, has always been the most difficult one to address.

[44:15] Because, like I said, a small haunt, if you go through it at a normal haunt pace, it's a couple minutes long. If you go through it at Speedy's pace, you could be out the other side before it looks like you went in. Yeah i think the only times that we've had people really slow down are if it's things that they have to push out of their way yeah and i think we're gonna have to we like i said we after our learning experience last year we're gonna rethink what we make that yeah but something will do that yeah but the closets we did a we did do a closet one that one was actually pretty fun Yeah, because you exited into a gore scene, which was not expected. Yeah, that was the year. I was really proud of that one because we combined the closet we saw at Chamber of Horrors. And I'm like, okay, the closet is neat in that you're going through the clothes, but it's too long. And when you come out, you just come out into darkness there. I'm like, what if you came out and then we did like the gore room we saw at the 13th Gate? Yeah, exactly. We combined those two because there's no way we're fitting in a claustrophobia tunnel in our garage. And it worked so beautifully, too. Yeah, it did. It was an amazing thing. And it was really funny because people would rush through the clothes. And if you rushed through it, you would go into the gore scene, not merely see it. And that's when the real screaming starts. Slow down, kids. Exactly.

[45:45] Yeah, that might be something we have to revisit. Yeah, that could fit in with steampunk. I can make an argument. Yeah.

[45:55] Okay. So, yeah, we've already talked about number 12. That's about the... Yeah. Other characters, I think is where we're at. 13. Okay.

[46:05] So the game actually talks about diversifying your income and adds options for you.

[46:12] There's a dice game that you can play in order to gain more currency for the other things to level up your stuff. There is a game cabinet where you can play a mini escape room. It's supposed to be your escape room, but it's really just a tower defense game. But all of the squares are available well I mean I so the thing about it is and I've thought about this hardly left we talked about this other haunted attraction based video games we wanted to talk about and it has helped basically building a haunted house is like building a like a tower defense game yeah it's just instead of trying to you know shoot the enemies and stop them from reaching the end you're trying to scare them and get them as many times on the way to the end. Exactly. It's the same game, just different goal. Yeah. You're scaring them forward. Yeah. Towards the end. You want them to get to the end, but you want them to get as much scare and enjoyment as you can along the way. And so it's very similar to building a tower. It's very similar to playing a tower defense game. So I think it's very apt that tower defense games are sort of finding that analogy there and are kind of adopting this as a quote unquote simulator.

[47:26] Yeah. I actually really think that's a good idea. And I And the fact that this one even talks about, like I said, diversifying income and finding new ways to bring in revenue. I think that's really, really cool and going a little bit above and beyond what I would expect from a game like this. Especially, once again, like a small mobile game. Exactly.

[47:44] Like, I was surprised at how in-depth this game actually gets. Because it is just a, you know... Free-to-play, add... Idle game. Yeah. You know, it's not something I was thinking that I'd wind up talking about, honestly. but here we are. So there are three characters. There are other characters that also you can get currency from. There's the bald Taoist who gives trivia questions. The mysterious bald president. I don't know why they're their names other than they are.

[48:21] And basically he wants you to look at an ad. And there's no way to decline if you accidentally click on him. Um so you have to watch the ad at that point wow yeah but you know it starts out the lower levels, i mean he does give good money but anyways and then there's the rage mode stepmom which is actually pretty fun and it's one of my favorite characters because basically this is your stepmom coming to poo-poo all over your thing and say how horrible and not scary it is. A clan of Karens, if you will. Yes, yes it is. And I think it gets up to like a hundred of them. Fuck. And they're all rushing through your games at the same time. Bitching and moaning and not checking out anything and just being unhappy. But if you can scare them. Yeah, exactly. So, and this is where the rating comes in. So you want to be, choose the room with the best rating to send them through because that has the best option for scaring all of them and for you to get all the goodies from them as they go through high risk high reward exactly yeah yeah so i actually find her pretty fun to play with but um there are also choices because things happen in the room these sound like the chance cards a monopoly type thing yeah where random shit happens and you gotta figure out how you're gonna cope with it exactly Exactly. Some guy loses his wallet.

[49:51] You're given the choice. Do you announce it on the loudspeaker that somebody's lost their wallet, or do you find the customer individually based off the photograph in the wallet?

[50:01] And, you know, and it tells you why it's wrong if you go with one of the choices over the other. Okay, which one is the right one in that one? The right one is to go to the customer individually. Okay, why? Because you would put the loudspeaker over the entire haunt and disrupt the immersive experience that the other customers are having.

[50:24] You see, that frustrates me because you should have a PA for front of house. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think the game fell short on that one. I want to say that. Because if you're a large enough haunt that you have this situation, you should have a PA for front of house that doesn't reach back of house. And that way, when someone's finished and cleared the haunt, you can give them their wallet back. Well, that's what they're talking about is doing that. It's the internal headsets between the employees that get it back to them. Yeah, but you could also like communicate with the parking lot and outside in front of house too. Oh, gotcha. I think that's what I'm talking about. No. I don't know why you would use a loudspeaker inside the hall to track someone's wallet down. No. You know. Exactly.

[51:13] There's a weird noise that happens. I'm not going to tell you the right answer because the wrong one's hilarious and everybody should go and look for that one. And then uh someone hurts their leg how do you handle that that guy is falling all the time i think he just wants the insurance pay up no the guy that comes and and picks him up and takes him away to just come and rescue him oh this is this i think it's a loved thing yeah all right all right, um i mean obviously i know how you handle it in an actual hod yeah but i won't ask again how you you handle it in a fake hod. Yeah. But I was just curious about the Lost Wallet one because I can see arguments either way. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

[51:58] So eventually you automate all the rooms, like I had mentioned earlier, and there is the element of pacing that matters. And the throughput, yeah. Pacing matters, throughput matters, where you put your scares matter, diversifying your scares matters, and, you know, diversifying your options for

[52:19] how much you want. And recruiting the best people for the best positions matters. Exactly. Playing to people's strengths matters. Yeah, no, this sounds like a surprisingly in-depth haunted attraction simulator for what is functionally an idle game mixed with some tower defense elements. Yeah, exactly. And that is pretty cool. I really do wish I could have played more of it. I did make several runs at it, but I just could not read it, even with cheaters on. I don't know, man. Maybe I need to turn the accessibility features on on my phone to zoom in or something, maybe give it another try. But I just it's so frustrating to not be able to read it I'm glad you were able to get through it though yeah, well I think that's it on that note everyone thank you very much for joining us on this rather meandering episode of Haunt Weekly this was Haunt Weekly episode 458 Happy Escape Tycoon, check out more Haunt Weekly at hauntweekly.com, hauntweekly.x slash twitter, hauntweekly.facebook and youtube.com slash hauntweekly Until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And we will see you all next week.