Contestant (no ontology)

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MazeWorld player characters are referred to as contestant, which may also be referred to (your) character(s).

Physical traits

Contestants may be one of the four genders that exist in the Mazes. They may be either male ♂, female ♀, X-male ☿, or X-female ⚥. All humans and many other creatures, such as non-wicked youkai, are typically one of four genders, and the contestant itself is no exception to this.

In almost all cases, contestants are humans, but about any roughly humanoid creature can be played, such as hybrids (anthropomorphic animals), so long as they don't have any advantages over a regular human. Upon their arrival in Mazeworld, every contestant is stripped of whatever magical, innate, or acquired powers they've had during their past lives, giving them human-like strength, so all contestants start on an equal foot. More information about what and what isn't ok is available here.

Statistics and abilities

Please refer yourself to statistics and abilities for more information.

Differences of play between genders

There is almost no sizable practical differences between genders, only slight differences in play which offer no significant advantage for any gender over any other.

Certain disguises work only on certain genders; disguising as a maid for example, can only be done by females and X-females, though males can easily achieve a similar disguise by simply attempting to impersonate a butler instead. The shrine maiden is the only NPC that is particularly difficult to impersonate, as the disguise can only be strictly worn by females, and none else.
Contestants will encounter human NPCs that are, 2/3 of the time (100% for perverted encounters), of the opposite of their technical gender, except during special cases such as during missions where most characters encountered in those situations have a fixed, scripted appearance. Rarely, named mission characters which are encountered CAN be different according to the gender of the contestant.

Purposes and origin of the term

When first introduced to the world, each Contestant is informed by the Administrator that they have died, but their souls have been collected and inserted into an identical body, with all supernatural or superhuman features and powers removed as needed. All Contestants are informed that their objective is to roam through the Mazes to find the Cardinal Amulets, which are divine artifacts capable of sending the Contestant back to the world they came from, provided they can survive the Mazes' dangers and challenges. In other words, each Contestant is told that they can earn a sort of "second chance" at life in whatever world they previously died in.

In appearance, if the Contestants simply stick to the objective of collecting the Amulets and returning home, it would seem that this is their entire purpose in the Mazes, and the most reasonable assumption for the term "Contestant" is that they are essentially playing a very deadly game where the prize is a second life in their homeworld, and the risk being permanent death.

In reality, the Administrator has conceived the idea of a Contestant to seek out skilled beings from other worlds to potentially become Admins on their own. Hebizuka Jinkou, currently the sole Administrator of the Mazes, has chosen to pick from the souls of people with great potential who had recently died for a good reason; there is in her opinion, "nothing more exceptional than a chance to avoid death, and nothing more symbolic than the ability to return home from what seemed like certain death". With these factors in mind, Hebizuka wanted Contestants to have a reason to fight for their lives in the Mazes and overcome any and all challenges, as deadly and as numerous as they may be; a sort of unwavering driving force.

Naturally, the Admin has also predicted that the Contestant might get accustomed to the life in the Mazes, and may even prefer it to their previous life. If it were to be the case, then the real plan can be set in motion: to pit the Contestant against one last few challenges and choices to test his/her worthiness for the role. If the Contestant were to overcome these challenges, then he or she can then be elevated to the status of Administrator on Hebizuka's side.

Again, in an effort to predict all possible situations, in case the Contestant wants to be an Administrator without Hebizuka around - essentially, to replace her rather than join her, Hebizuka has also planned a few things, just to show she isn't going to give up her position easily...

Known Contestants

Every contestant was assigned a number: this is where every contestant's ID number comes from.

  • From the beginning of the game and until version 3, contestant numbers officially started at number 346 due to the now-deprecated Failed feature.
  • From version OP2 onwards, the numbering system is reset; even Contestants that existed before will be assigned a new number.
    • For OP2 specifically, all Contestant ID numbers will be prefixed with a "B" and will start with "01".
    • Sessions played during version OP2 are meant to be a testing period in preparation for the upcoming version OP3. When version OP3 comes out, a new leaderboards and progress wipe will occur, and any Contestants introduced from OP3 onwards will be given proper ID numbers, starting "001" onwards.

Existed up until version 2.5

Existed during version 3/OP1

OP2 testing period contestants

  • B01: Not assigned yet

See also