The Cave Is A Lie

Our game’s last content release had a small problem that left players stuck in the Ancient Greece realm, unable to come back to tropical. And the major activity in Greece was running around in underwear (Figment: How’s that a bug, exactly?).

So we got our new content release out and it fixed that issue, but another one popped up. Players who died in Greece, under certain circumstances, found themselves stuck in the underworld caves, unable to revive.

When I wasn’t crying over this (and there were some serious tears), I was snarkily suggesting that my players bribe Charon, or get Orpheus to bail them out, or for heaven’s sakes, players, don’t eat the pomegranate seeds while you’re waiting!

That is precisely why I got a degree in classics.

But back to the underworld bug. Because of the Entropian real-cash economy, we’re not able to give a lot of items as quest rewards. In-game achievements, especially sharable, unlockable achievements can reward exploratory gameplay and inworld successes as well. We tried to create a variety of epic and silly achievements, to be gained in both obvious and surprising ways.

So when my players got stuck in the underworld, all they could do is fool around enough to unlock the goofy meta-achievement found there: The Cave Is A Lie

You know this is completely true because I could not make this up.