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A Quick Start Guide to ZampanioSim
ZampanioSim is a game of exploration, though not your traditional video game exploration. You explore menus and websites and code to grasp the meaning of this game and its stories to behold. The branches can be found from the main entryway here: http://farragofiction.com/ZampanioSim/
The Main Rooms:
The North door is the first path most explore, as it is the only path that appears if you’ve not played before. It is a simulation of a menu for an RPGMaker style game. There is no exiting the menu here, at least for now. To proceed here, you unlock skills from the skill tree, which range from procedurally generated skills to upgrades for the pause menu. If you are low on skill points, check other option tabs. You’ll likely receive some skill points for something you unlocked earlier. There is also a game to be found here using some methods as described later.
The East (accessed by clicking the East rug) leads to the initially more game part of this ARG. You are an Eye as you walk around with the arrow keys or WASD in this maze collecting bits of your memory in the form of objects placed in the rooms. The biggest obstacles to the collectathon gameplay are the crows. Any collectible they come in contact not only gets removed from the room, it gets removed from your counter if you have already collected it before. This makes trying to potentially complete this difficult. There is a theoretical way, if you quickly leave any rooms with crows they won't have the opportunity to collect a memory. However, completing the collection is not the primary purpose of this section. To proceed, keep up with the chat that is ongoing to the bottom right. It will update intermittently. Once you have exhausted the chat, your exit will appear in the center of every room you spawn in. The exit will stop any more memory objects from spawning.
The South (accessed by clicking the South rug) is a train with only one direction. You can walk with the arrow keys and WASD like before. If you walk over the image in the center of the room, you character will comment on it. An intercom will also play occasionally and make a unique comment based on the image. There is also red text in the background. To read it, while there is an easier method, for now you can attempt to through the transparent window in some of the train cars and by scrolling the train cars so the text can be seen in the space between two of them. There is also two green squares to the right. The first is an autowalk, where your character will automatically walk forward. It does not stop to let you read what it passes over, so be aware of that. The second square stops the screen shake. To progress, you find enough unique images to get to 100% completion as indicated by the top right of the screen. You can complete the objective, but there will be repeat cars that use images seen before that do not count towards your progress.
There are other paths to be found from the main entryway, but not indicated by any item. Just move your cursor around the room slowly until it indicates something to click on. The main one though, is on the opposite side of the eastern rug. This leads to the West, which is styled after AI dungeon and allows participants to collectively input commands to progress the story.
Diving Deeper:
To get the most out of further explorations of ZampanioSim, you need to get familiar with DevTool. It is a feature available on all websites. You right click the webpage, go to inspect at the bottom, and along the bottom or to the side of the webpage this tool will open up to the inspector tab. The main tabs I have used in my explorations are the Console and the Debugger tool.
The Console tab is often used as a vehicle for storytelling. Notes and messages will pop up according to actions performed in the main game. In subsequent playthroughs, it is best to keep this up as you play. There are also limited opportunities where you can interact through the Console menu. For example, in the North, if you type in window.hack and not enter it, a menu will appear showing autocomplete options to hack various menus in the pause screen. Opportunities like this might be found throughout the different routes.
The next tab I found most use for is the Debugger tab. This leads to a folder system which stores both code and assets for the game. To help you along, to the North and East there are rabbit holes accessible from an icon made to look like a literal rabbit hole. You usually find them at the end of both routes. There, they ask for important words if you know them. To find the important words, go to the debugger, then go farragofiction > ZampanioSimDirection > static > js > CanvasFuckery > PasswordStorage.ts. If you click on this, in the debugger the code will open up and scrolling onwards, there is a list of codes that work for the rabbit hole. They will often spawn their stories in the console menu.
Notable Uses of the Inspect tool:
To the North, you can turn the section into a game. On the default tab you start out on, search the code for a section labeled ThisIsNotAGame. You can search it in the html manually. Go to the part in the code and click on it until you get the indication that you can write in the code. Then erase the word Not in the statement. This will transport you to a more game oriented section of this path.
On the landing page, you are able to find more texts that were not visually indicated and ones that are time gated for various reasons. Go to the Debugger tab, open all the way to the index. In this code, you will find sections that say goTo "Direction" and give various sections labeled /TitleofThing. Those are the end bits to links to the different sections of Zampaniosim.
There are multiple uses not listed here as to not spoil this exploratory aspect of this experience. Have fun.
The Story:
Depending on your proclivities, you might consider giving a link to a word document filled with many of the story segments a spoiler. With the methods I provided, you should be able to see most of what I have listed on your own. The document, however, orders the segments in a way I find most coherent. If you wish to skip the search phase or have searched enough but wish to read it in some sort of order, the document can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_s7z0Ug7P4rclQRmat0WFk7Xz5y9Lp5l/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108332830234317382798&rtpof=true&sd=true
It is not complete as Zampaniosim is constantly updating, but it should help get you started with understanding the gist of it.
Further Links:
The Discord- The Discord on first blush may seem like a locked down vehicle of only lore exploration, however there is a community here. It uses the Discord thread system. The main path is under the general tab, and to the top right you may see a # symbol. This opens up threads. You are looking for the thread called the true general. Come say hi. https://discord.gg/tZmtKwnbac