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Welcome to RandstadRail!

Update 1: see Verstappen below.

Update 2: less than 24 hours to go now! All the hidden GA's have less than 5 entries; come on people! :)

Update 3: Decided to add links to hidden GA's with less than 5 entries; see below.

Update 4: Explained how the hidden GA's were hidden for those interested.

The bit no one reads.

So I don't really care about doing birthday or cakeday trains, or trains when reaching arbitrary goals/achievements, etc. Creating giveaways is a bit of a drag (not that the site isn't making things pretty easy for you) so I haven't done many in a long time. When I saw the London Underground train I was immediately inspired to do something similar. It's rather sad that it took this long, but here we are. My stats have gotten so bad that this is more than overdue. I sure buy enough bundles to create a train like this. So enjoy. :)

The 'train'.

I've decided to use the local RandstadRail as the template for my giveaways. The RandstadRail is based in a few cities; most notably Rotterdam and Den Haag; both are part of the Randstad. You might want to use these two maps to help you find your way a little: Rotterdam, Den Haag.

Note that the Den Haag map holds a lot more lines than are part of the RandstadRail and neither of the cards hold the single bus route that's part of RandstadRail. And then there are the future stops that are not on there either... Further below is a checklist of all the lines in the train; that should help if you are afraid you might miss something. There should be 184 stops, 3 nearby landmarks and 5 extra stops at the Department of Administrative Affairs.

I'm not a big fan of SGTools and I've never had any real problems with winners (but then I don't look at them closely). After reading some stories on the forums here I did finally decide to make all GA's level 2. If you are not level 2 at this moment you should have enough time to get to level 2 before this train ends; May 24, 15:00 CET.

Please don't put any thanks messages on the GA's unless you win. Any other messages are welcome though. Enter here.

Hidden GA's

It wouldn't be SteamGifts if there weren't any hidden GA's. :p

You can find all the below games by paying close attention. All you need to do is ride the train and read/look at pictures. Anything you need is in the train and on here. And to save everyone some time; you do not need to look at page sources. I'm not so cruel as to have you look at 200 page sources. For two GA's you might want to take 'train' more literally.

Solution

The above GA's were hidden in a few different ways.

Most were hidden by adding clues in the title of certain pics (if you didn't know: when you hover over a pic you get a small popup with text, if the creator of the post adds any). So you got quite a few pics saying things like "3U", '2x", "46", etc. After seeing enough of them it shouldn't be hard to figure out that the first character was always a number going from 1 through 5. And don't all GA urls have a 5 character unique slug? :)

All that was left for those clues was to put them together in the right way. They were thematically linked in two different ways. A number of them were on the first pic and all of em were on GA's for games that occured more then four times. So if you combined all the clues from the ABO MANDO GA's for example you got to the right place.

A few others had a different theme; there were at least five pics of hospitals and those together got you to Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome. :)

And then there were a number of D&D / RPG pics; those together got you another GA.

Two others were specifically called out on a GA page that had a GA for DLC and were thus easy to find but maybe not easy to solve. This one had as answer "AsCEo". And this one was a bit more tricky; there you had five 'mirrored' letters. Reversing them gave you the correct slug but the font on here is a bit tricky so it helps to first copy it to Notepad or somewhere.

Then we had one that was in plain view but requires a lot of reading and paying attention; see if you can find it here.

And then there was one that wasn't found at all... On the Sunless Sea bit of this post I did say my Fallen London profile is easy to find and if anyone had taken a look there they would have found something familiar. I'll add a screenshot to this post to show it now.

And then there is the Sunless Sea GA... It wasn't hidden but did have a requirement. I did get a three messages in Fallen London but they were all from people who created an account just to send me a message; bad sports! So I decided not to enter anyone to the GA and we'll keep it for another GA some time.

It's Too Hard

I wanted to give away copies of Good Robot for people lower than level 2 using this but I forgot to change the level... :/

Anyway, for an extra Good Robot giveaway check this thread.

Jigidi

I wanted to give away copies of Good Robot for people lower than level 2 using this but I forgot to change the level... :/

Anyway, for an extra Good Robot giveaway check this thread.

Good Robot

I'm a big fan of Shamus Young, the creator of Good Robot.

His blog is well worth a read. Not only does it have everything about how Good Robot came to be but also posts about a whole lot of different topics, all of them well written and interesting.

I'm hoping Good Robot is selling loads; Shamus deserves it. If you've never heard of the game before, check it out.

Sunless Sea

I'm giving away one copy of Sunless Sea but since it's so closely linked to Fallen London I want the winner to be a Fallen London player.

If you play Fallen London please send me a message in the game, using one of the social actions (like The Neath's Mysteries > A strange sort of prank or Invite someone to a Sparring Bout). I will then send you a message back with the url for the giveaway.

My Fallen London profile should be easy enough to find; same name as on here.

Verstappen

I am so hyper, I have goosebumps all over, this is a state of true bliss.

Who could ever expect Verstappen would win today? He doesn't need 18 wheels, 4 is more than enough and his motor isn't so mini.

Let's hope for more motor(dr)ama on all the circuits this year and many more!

All the Verstappen giveaways end at 22:00 CET tonight (Sunday 15th).

View attached image.

8 years ago*

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136 Comments

Corran

Desert Bus

Only today I found out about the below Kickstarter, weird how I missed that. Anyway, With three days to go there is still enough time for me to tell you about it and for you to support a good cause should you wish to.

What is Desert Bus?

Started in 2007 by internet sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun (aka LRR), Desert Bus for Hope combines video games and tedium to benefit charity.

Desert Bus is the world's longest running internet-based fundraiser and has raised more than $2.4 million for Child's Play over its eight-year history.

What started as an improptu event broadcast from a living room is now a professionally organized fundraiser; it takes more than 15 people to plan the event and another 45 dedicated volunteers to keep the whole thing running once it starts.

Our viewers direct the action, talking with us via live chat, challenging us to sing, dance and generally make fools of ourselves in front of thousands of viewers. The Desert Bus Craft-Along allows people from all over the world to help us raise money by donating incredible handmade art and goods for auction.

Desert Bus is a great example of what happens when a huge community of people from all over the world - organizers, volunteers, crafters and viewers - come together to achieve a common goal.

Have a YouTube movie: Desert Bus: Fury Road

The Kickstarter

A documentary feature chronicling the bizarre evolution of the DBFH event & the planning, production, and execution of our 10th year!

The Kickstarter page should have everything you need: Desert Bus for Hope: The Documentary.

Anything else?

Reply to this post should you wish to discuss anything LRR/DesertBus related.

8 years ago