Welcome to The Contest!
It’s Summer of 2026 in the United States of America. Job prospects are down, gas prices are up, tax season has passed, baseball season’s just getting started, and it’s our team’s year, damnit. Business as usual. It’s hot as hell outside, but at least we have air conditioning. It’s shaping up to be another classic American Summer.
That is, of course, until June Xth, 2026, somewhere between 2:14 PM and 2:17 PM EST. At that moment, for a select few people in one of America’s many malls, everything changed. In the blink of an eye, their surroundings change. No longer are they inside one of the great testaments to capitalism, surrounded by colorful shops and ambient chatter. Seemingly instantaneously, that setting is replaced by an almost painfully bright rectangular room. Those 12 people, dressed in a sort of black loungewear that has replaced the clothes they were just wearing, face each other for the first time. What the hell?
After the initial shock wears off, they hear sickeningly cheery male voice deliver the following instructions:
“Contestants! You must vote for a leader. Choose carefully, as this person will learn something important about the nature of the contest you are participating in. You have 10 Minutes to Decide! Vote using your tablets!”
On every wall, from every angle, is a timer. 9:59. 9:58. 9:57… clock’s ticking.
This game has a live element. You need to be avaliable for 1 hour, every day, starting at 2026-05-31T23:00:00Z. If this might not work for you, see below
Other Important Details to Know:
- There is a live element. There needs to be 1 hour/day in which everyone alive is available. That means everyone. The other 23 hours/day will be asynchronous RP where you can chat with your fellow contestants
- There is not much of an exploration/environmental interaction factor. It’s a few relatively static rooms. There is still a mystery factor.
- The game is very “PvP”. Without spoiling too much, it is a classic death game akin to Danganronpa or Squid Game or yttd or whathaveyou.
- With that, there will be death, and there’s a good chance you’ll be out early. Mentally prepare for that.
- It is an RP first, and I am not going to assign a win condition. Some of you may survive, and some of you will not. That is one distinction, but I’m not going to explicitly call either way victory, as it’s not always as black-and-white.
- Still, there will be heavy socials in a Survivor/Big Brother type of way. Alliances, backstabbing, and whatnot. Be ready.
- Things are not going to be exactly fair or balanced. They are not meant to. It is an RP.
Character Cards
Note*: You do not need to come up with a name for your character. They will not remember it whilist in The Contest.
Necessary Information
Age:
Height:
Weight:
Gender/Pronouns:
Location as of 6/X/26: (has to be an American mall)
Occupation:
Family:
Bio:
(Optional) What they were doing in the Mall before finding themselves in the contest:
(Optional) Draw your character’s avatar: See example card for inspiration. The idea is to give them a fun shape or something. You can be as detailed or not-detailed as you want, but whatever you give me I’m drawing in the style below, to be used throughout the game in various situations. It’ll only be 1 color. You can also just describe what you want to me. If you give me nothing I’m going to draw something for you.
Example Card:
Contestant #???
Age: 17
Height: 5’9
Weight: 134 lbs.
Gender: M
Location as of 6/X/26: River Park Square Shopping Mall, Spokane, WA
Occupation: High School Student/Nordstrom Sales Associate
Family: 2 younger sisters, 1 older brother, parents together.
Bio: [???] comes from a middle-class background. Both of his parents have library sciences masters, and constantly encourage him to follow in their footsteps, but he hates reading. Unless you count the auto-generated TikTok captions on Young Sheldon episodes sliced into 30 parts. Which his parents do not. [???] wants to be a track coach some day and doesn’t find reading to be as good a use of his time. He thinks he can get an athletic scholarship somewhere, probably not a D1 school, but he’ll take anything that’s both cold and far from home. He can play guitar, and isn’t very good at it, but his more musically-minded younger sisters usually rope him into playing with them. [???] takes the good with the bad and considers himself significantly more level-headed than just about anyone he knows. People say he’s unmotivated and/or wasting his talents, but [???] would argue it’s just being laid-back.
What they were doing in the Mall before finding themselves in The Contest: [???] wasn’t even scheduled on the Xth, but his check just got in and she wanted to cash it ASAP so he could afford the Conan Gray tickets dropping that night. The moment it happened, [???] was on the escalator up to the Nordstrom.
Signups
- Atlas
- May
- ACE
- Leafia
- Ishmael
Spec
- Willow
- Squirrel
- Chomps
The game will take 12 days from start. For that reason, in order to not overlap with FAM, the latest I will start is 6/5/26. Ideally, we start it earlier just in case we have to delay a day for whatever reason, but I accept I might not get the sign ups before then. If so, we can delay.
You can still in even if you’re not 100% sure on the time. When you /in, even if you are 100% sure on the time, fill out this poll of avaliable times so that we can figure out alternative times etc. in case people can’t make it.
- 1:00-2:00 AM EST
- 2:00-3:00 AM EST
- 3:00-4:00 AM EST
- 4:00-5:00 AM EST
- 5:00-6:00 AM EST
- 6:00-7:00 AM EST
- 7:00-8:00 AM EST
- 8:00-9:00 AM EST
- 9:00-10:00 AM EST
- 10:00-11:00 AM EST
- 11:00-12:00 PM EST
- 12:00-1:00 PM EST
- 1:00-2:00 PM EST
- 2:00-3:00 PM EST
- 3:00-4:00 PM EST
- 4:00-5:00 PM EST
- 5:00-6:00 PM EST
- 6:00-7:00 PM EST
- 7:00-8:00 PM EST
- 8:00-9:00 PM EST
- 9:00-10:00 PM EST
- 10:00-11:00 PM EST
- 11:00-12:00 AM EST
- 12:00-1:00 AM EST
0 voters