Before starting the ER Champ online qualifications, it's good to get familiar with the game interface. Game is played only within it's graphical interface. It means that nothing outside of the page with a game screen is required to finish the game.
Game screen - here you will see rooms that the players will visit throughout the game. In the rooms, there are puzzles and items needed to solve them. Players solve puzzles only within this space.
Movement arrows - they are used for moving around the rooms (left and right). In case of zooming on an object in a room, left arrow is used for zooming out.
Inventory - here are displayed items collected by the team during the game. Next to every item, there are three buttons, used for interacting with an item: "Use item" (first), "Combine with other item" (second), "View item" (third). To use an item, you have to click the first option and then click element on a game screen you want to interact with. To combine two elements that are currently in your inventory, click the second button on one of the items, and then click the second item. Both those actions can be accomplished by dragging one item onto another. In that case, please remember, that you can have a problem with using an item with precision.
Messages - they are mostly answers to players actions. Messages can, for example, inform the player if given answer to a puzzle is correct or not. They can also display really dry jokes, which are our speciality.
Answer input field - here you can type answer in order to solve a puzzle during the game. Answers can consist of any character, and capitalization does not matter.
It's worth to remember that actions of every team member are processed by the game sequentially, so too many clicks by many players can slow the game down for the whole team. So it's good to make sure there's a good comunication within the team and to not click at random.
Important information regarding the game interface
When at least two players are on the same view, one player sees the other's actions (circular traces of mouse clicks, marked as 6).
When a player invokes an action, this change also automatically appears to other players. For example: when one of the players enters a code that will open the door, the game will update for other players, which will result in the view of the already open door.
If at least two players are on the puzzle view with a text field for answers, they see each other trying to enter passwords. The red password means the answer is incorrect (marked as 7), and the green password (marked as 8) - the correct one.
Inventory is automatically synced across all contestants: no need to click to preview changes.
It is possible to switch the color scheme of the game page to dark mode.
Some actions on the playing field can be performed with the keyboard. The list of possible actions is as follows:
left arrow or A - view moves to the left, if possible
right arrow or D - view moves to the right, if possible
tab - highlights the first or next inventory item for use
shift+tab - highlights the previous inventory item for use
spacebar - opens preview of the currently used item
spacebar or escape - closes the item preview
Before you start, we also recommend to play tutorial and try to finish last year qualifications. If you do that, team will be familiar with the interface and you won't waste time for getting used to it :)
