On Monday, December 23rd, 2024, Linden Lab announced a special holiday gift for all Second Life users: six months access to the upcoming 2025 seasons 1 and 2 of MadPea Unlimited, which commences on January 1st, 2025. After allowing for the initial rush, I hopped over early on January 2nd, 2025 to take a peep at what is on offer.
To recap on the offer: Linden Lab is covering the cost of 6 months access to the MadPea Unlimited premium group, which gives subscribers early access to MadPea’s new games and experiences product releases, gifts, and hunts, as well as access to MadPea’s library of available in-world games and experiences. Subscriptions usually cost L$6,000 for three months – so the total value of this gift to users is $12,000 per person, and the offer runs through until the end of June 2025. An important note with the gift is that is does not require any sign-up or commitment to any on-going subscription; to participate, all residents need to do is hop along to the MadPea Unlimited region from January 1st, 2025 and join the fun.
All activities and games are accessed via the Discovery hub. This provides access to all of the current in-world games and adventures, with the Weekly Drops and Monthly Collectables pick-up point lying beyond it (with the first drops of 2025 due on January 8th, 2025). One thing to note is that MadPea utilise SL Experiences, so you’ll have to accept the Experience in order for the games and adventures to work.
Each game / adventure is accessed via a dedicated portal. alongside of each portal is a kiosk offering details of the game / adventure, which includes a general rating for the activity – E for everyone (roughly equivalent to SL’s G rating), M for Mature (roughly equivalent to SL’s M rating) and M +17, indicating it contains themes such as death, murder, etc.). The kiosks also supply the dedicated HUD for a given activity, and provide information on things like the number of achievements / rewards which can be obtained. A HUD might be presented as a direct-wear / add item, or as a package giver that includes the HUD and other items. Note that while a SL Experience is utilised, this does not extend to HUD attachment – you should add them done manually.
For January 2025, the activities comprise:
- Four Escape Room style challenges of varying levels of difficulty and length, comprising Ghostly Goal and Wizard’s Tower and Forsaken Funhouse (all rated E), and Deadly Dungeon (Rated M 17+).
- Three adventure- style games comprising a horror story called Insidious Island (rated M) and The Kidnapping (rated E), and Jewel of the Nile (rated E)
- Ascension, a puzzle challenge
- Two murder mysteries – Merry Mayhem at Frostwood Manor (rated E) and The Naughty List Murders (rated M 17+), the latter forming the latest MadPea addition.
Games are variable in length, the average being between 2 and 3 hours, with Forsaken Funhouse lasting up to around 8 hours. However, this time does not necessarily have to be done all at once, it is possible to leave, detach the HUD and leave, then wear it and return (with The Naughty Murders List, for example, you can add the HUD, open the Mad City map and click on the last location you visited and then resume).
I took a quick run-through of the two murder mysteries, and found the basics to be broadly similar: interacting with static characters who interact with you in both voice and text, as you move through a series of locations seeking clues, your progress and other information recorded on your game HUD. In this I found both a little formulaic – but that’s my fault for running through both mysteries back-to-back, rather than mixing two different game types.
That said, once involved, I did – as used to be the case when I was a regular at MadPea – become engrossed in working out who had done what (although in the case of The Naughty List Murders, I believed I’d figured the likely culprit roughly half-way through the game, based on a comment passed by one of the characters, and ended-up continuing to see if I was right – which again is half the fun with whodunits (and it turned out I was right, in part)).
A nice touch is the the majority of the games are geared towards group play, so people can work together on them. Check the information kiosks to conform whether group play is intended – just work in IM with friends. One thing I would say is that given these are still the early days of the gift being available (at least at the time of writing). As such, the games can get busy.
When announced, the offer of MadPea Unlimited access gather some negative responses through various mediums. Personally, I don’t see the harm; MadPea have always provided engaging entertainment, and an arrangement like this is a nice way for LL to both encourage users to have a little fun and making many who many not be aware of MadPea or have never tried their Unlimited subscription to give them a try; and if that encourages some to support MadPea by taking out a subscription for membership after the gift period ends – that can’t be bad, can it?
Related Information
- MadPea Unlimited (rated Moderate)
- MadPea Unlimited Season 1 2025 (January-March) preview – MadPea Games
- A holiday gift from the Lab: 6 months access to MadPea Unlimited in Second Life – this blog
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 