Understanding the Match Modifiers and Main Menu

The Match Modifiers are the first thing you'll see when starting the game, and can be a bit overwhelming. This guide will help you understand each parameter so you can fine-tune your gameplay experience.

THE "MAIN MENU" SCENE

Once you boot up Escape from Mandrillia, you'll appear on Observation Chamber 4 at SPHYNX underground facilities, also known as the "Main Menu".

As the VR player, you're the boss on this scene. PC players can spawn as Mandrillians inside the observation cage to scream at you and pound the cage's glass, but they won't be able to hurt you. Yet.

If it's your first time playing, you'll get a popup asking you to set up your PC-only audio device (you can always change this up later in the sound settings section)

THE ROBOT RIG
This thing at the very center of the chamber is the Robot Rig. You can start a match straight away by pressing the big ol' blinking START button in front of it -but let's take a look at these two touchscreens.


The panel on the left allows you to invite any of your Steam friends for a Remote Play session, in case you don't have people physically at your computer to play locally. There's also a link to the official Discord server in case you wanna find some other people to play with![discord.gg]

The panel on the right has some very important global settings:

CALIBRATE HEIGHT: press this button for a second to adapt the height of your in-game avatar to your actual height. This is important, as the game will use that height to calculate when you're crouching/leaning.

You can switch between VERSUS and COOP mode. In VERSUS, the PC players will control the Mandrillians, while in COOP, they will control friendly combat drones.

If you have FIRING RANGE selected, the match will instead bring you to the training area, so you can hone in your weapon skills and participate in challenges with leaderboards, or just play around in the sandbox (this mode is always set up to be COOP)

If you have any CHALLENGE applied, these options won't be available, instead showing you a warning -more about that on the CHALLENGES AND PRESETS section. You can press CANCEL CHALLENGE to go back to custom modes.

SKIP INTRO is a toggle that will skip the introductory cutscene when you start a normal match.
TIPS toggles the game tips -this can also be done from your WRIST MENU

So we said hitting start will launch a normal match with default settings, but what about all these buttons scattered around?

Most of those are one of the game's main features: the Match Modifiers. Be it you want to adapt the gameplay to balance for less experienced players, or just to mess around and try different play styles, the Match Modifiers will give you complete control over dozens of parameters. With this guide you'll learn what each of them does.

CHALLENGES AND PRESETS

Don't feel like reading all of this crap? PRESETS are packs of settings that offer a specific, pre-tested experience. Most of them are variations of the standard game to adapt to different skill levels from the VR and PC side, but some of them are full gameplay changers, ranging from the survival stealth of the HORROR preset to the chaotic high-octane action of SUPERSOLDIER.

Each preset has a short description; use the arrow buttons to move between presets and press the APPLY button to automatically change all the relevant match settings. You can always keep customizing the settings after applying a preset -if you want to go to the baseline, just apply the STANDARD preset.

While Presets are more or less suggestions for you to play around with, CHALLENGES are a more traditional way to test your skills at the game. All challenges will put you against NPC Mandrillians (there's both SOLO and COOP challenges), and completing them will unlock rewards, often in the form of cosmetics for the Robot and Coop Drones.

Every Challenge has a short description, stating its difficulty, a rough mission brief, and whatever the unlock for completing it will be.

Just like with Presets, pressing APPLY will get the challenge ready to go once you press START.

GAME SETTINGS

These modifiers change the core gameplay.


EXTRA ZONE: RANDOM by default, this determines which one of the big gates will have a full extra zone behind it, instead of the small "checkpoint" area.

MODE: with CLASSIC ESCAPE, the goal is to find three high-clearance keycards (yellow) to use on the elevator to escape the facility. For this, you'll first need to find medium-clearance keycards to unlock locked-down gates around the area. In BRIEFCASE EXTRACTION, you'll need to find an AXIOM briefcase by using Scanner Laptops scattered around the map. CLASSIC ESCAPE is the OG mode, geared towards Versus and Solo mode, while BRIEFCASE EXTRACTION is more balanced around Coop mode.

TIME LIMIT: lets you set a time limit to the match. As a VR player, you can check the remaining time on your left hand, next to your health indicator. What happens once the counter gets to zero depends on the next setting.

COUNTDOWN STYLE: changes the win/lose conditions on timed modes. ESCAPING STOPS COUNTDOWN means you'll need to do a full elevator escape to win before the time runs out, even if you killed all the Mandrillians. CLEAR STOPS COUNTDOWN makes the timer stops once you kill the last Mandrillian. NEUROTOXIN flips the mode: the Robot will win the match if it's alive by the time the countdown finishes, with a deadly neurotoxin killing any organics while leaving the Robot and Coop Drones intact.

OPEN GATES: a somewhat niche setting to start with all of the big gates unlocked from the start. This can lead to extremely fast-paced modes, especially if combined with disabled extra zones.

COOP LOOT: changes the amount of ammo you will find for your Drones in Coop Mode.

BOT OPTIONS (MANDRILLIAN BOTS AND INSECTOIDS)

This section is all about the computer-controlled enemies: Mandrillian Bots and Insectoids.

Mandrillian Bots are the backbone of Solo and Coop mode; they will behave like a somewhat high-level Mandrillian player, with some caveats. They are subject to most of the match modifiers you can set for the regular human players, except for the specific settings on this screen.

Mandrillian Bots can also be added to Versus matches as an added challenge for the VR player or to help out new players on the PC side.

Insectoids are an environmental hazard for both the Robot and the Mandrillians: these nasty critters will roam the area feeding on corpses, and are quite territorial.


SOLO MODE does the same as setting the (human) Mandrillian RESPAWN setting to 0: the match won't allow any human player to join, and the PC view will be set to spectator mode.

TOTAL MANDRILLIAN BOTS: This is the respawn pool for the Mandrillian Bots, separate from the human one, from 0 to 99 -setting it to ENDLESS will keep them respawning forever.

MAX ACTIVE BOTS: How many Mandrillian Bots you want to face at the same time, up to a maximum of 3 -remember this is independent of the human-controlled Mandrillians, so if you are already playing with 2 friends you can have up to 5 Mandrillians roaming the facilities at the same time.

RESPAWN: Setting this to SAME AS HUMANS will make them respect the set DESPAWN TIME on your Mandrillian Settings section. However, they can also use the Dynamic Wave mode. This mode will have them adjust their respawn time according to events in the match, with periods of "rest" between intense waves that could be triggered either automatically after a random time or by opening a gate, calling the elevator, starting an extraction scan, etc. There are three wave intensity levels to choose from (SLOW - STANDARD - INTENSE).

UPGRADES: The kind of upgrades the Mandrillian Bots will use. The default of DYNAMIC will have them behave like their human counterparts, with their own pool of points to buy them (this will also get affected by the price multiplier you set for the human players). You can also set them to RANDOM, or lock them into a single upgrade type.

INSECTOID INFESTATION: This setting controls the maximum number of Insectoids that can be present on a match, with the default being MINIMAL. Note that anything above MEDIUM, especially when combined with Insectoid respawning, can have a hit on weaker CPUs.

INSECTOID RESPAWNING: When OFF, no more Insectoids will respawn after you kill the ones present at the start of the match. Turning this to ON will keep respawning them to keep them at their infestation level numbers.

MANDRILLIAN SETTINGS

These settings affect the Mandrillian team, both human and bot.


RESPAWNS: the (minimum) number of Mandrillians the VR player will need to kill before winning. If there are two Mandrillian players and the counter goes to 0, when one of them dies their screen will go back from splitscreen to single screen (this will be reverted if the surviving Mandrillian picks up a 1-up powerup in the vents). If there are Mandrillian Bots, the match will keep going in spectator mode.

EXTRA SPAWNS: enabled by default. When disabled, Mandrillians will not find 1-up powerups in the vents, being limited to just health powerups. 1-up powerups give an extra respawn, while also fully restoring the Mandrillian's health and stamina and giving you bonus points to spend on upgrades.

DESPAWN TIME: the time a Mandrillian corpse will take to despawn after being killed, allowing the player to respawn in a new location.

RESPAWN: VENT UNLOCK is the default mode: Mandrillians must unlock spawn points by smashing the vent ceiling grates. DYNAMIC will have all vents unlocked from start, and after the first death you will be able to spawn from the ground in a place near the Robot.


For the Mandrillian health modifiers, it's best to first understand the HP, gibbing, and Critical Area systems.

DEFAULT MANDRILLIAN HEALTH BEHAVIOR:

Mandrillian hitboxes are separate between the main body, the limbs, and a small "brain" hitbox between the eyes.

Mandrillian have separate HP values for the body, brain, and each limb. Their current value is represented on the small Mandrillian graphic on the HUD.

If either the body or brain HP values reach 0, the monkey dies.

"Critical areas" are zones that, when hit with most weapons, will deal 2x damage to body HP. On a fresh mandrillian, the skull is the only critical area, but if any limb reaches 0 HP it will also become a critical area, and any subsequent hits will deal 2x body damage.

The brain weakpoint, if enabled, counts as a critical area, but it also has its own HP. It's a very low value, so basically any hit to the brain will kill a Mandrillian.

If a Mandrillian gets damaged in a very short timeframe by a value of 3x their base body HP, they will instantly gib. This is usually achieved via explosives or shotgun blasts to the face. Gibbing near the Robot will cover its view with blood, which is usually a visual-only thing, but certain modifiers can turn this into a way for it to repair its damage.

BODY HP: multiplier of the main body HP value for the Mandrillians, with 100 as base value. You can switch it from VULNERABLE (default behavior), GIB ONLY (will only take damage if dealt burst damage high enough to cause gibbing), or INVINCIBLE (completely impervious to any damage)

LIMB HP: multiplier for the arms and legs' HP values for the Mandrillians, with 100 as a base value. You can switch it from VULNERABLE (default behavior), GIB ONLY (will only take damage if dealt burst damage high enough to cause gibbing), or INVINCIBLE (completely impervious to any damage)

WEAKPOINT HP: multiplier for the "brain hitbox" of the Mandrillians. Increasing it will make it so one shot right between the eyes won't be enough to off a Mandrillian.

WEAKNESS: changes the Mandrillian's weaknesses, damage multipliers, and brain hitbox behavior:

• CRITICAL ONLY: default behavior, with the brain hitbox removed (shots between the eyes will count as regular head critical shots). Mandrillians will take 2x damage on critical areas and will die if their body HP goes to zero.
  
• BRAIN+CRITICAL: same as default behavior but with a small "brain" hitbox between their eyes with its own HP values. Mandrillians will take 2x damage on critial areas and will die if either their brain or body HP goes to zero.
  
• BRAIN ONLY: Mandrillians won't take 2x damage when hit on critical areas, but will still be killed if the brain HP goes to zero.
  
• NONE: Mandrillians won't take 2x damage on critical areas, nor have a brain hitbox.

TRACKING: enables or disables the ability of the Mandrillians to use their Tracking ability, useful to find the VR player's location in dark areas or while cloaked.

ATK RECHARGE: the speed at which the Mandrillian's stamina points (the six circles at the botton of the screen) recharge. If you disable it, once you deplete your stamina points you will need to go back to the vents to recover via health or extra spawn powerups.

BERSERK: when not having any upgrade active, Mandrillians slowly charge a BERSERK special move they can activate once it's full. It charges overtime, but the process can be sped up by damaging the Robot and picking up vent powerups (the same you would recharge upgrades after using them). This Setting changes the speed for the Berserk to charge, or disables it outright.

GAS DAZE: when Mandrillians get a sniff of the green poison gas, they will get stunned for a while, their movement speed reduced and unable to attack or jump. You can control the duration of this effect with this setting.

UPGRADE PRICE: use this to increase or decrease the cost of upgrades for the Mandrillians.

SPRINT BLIPS: by default, if the Robot runs at full speed, there will be minimap blips representing its "footsteps" if it's 15 meters from a Mandrillian or closer; Mandrillians will also be able to see small smoke puffs around the Robot's position and their Minimap will get a glowing outline. This settings allows you to tweak this mechanic, or to disable it entirely.

LAPTOP BLIP: unique to the BRIEFCASE EXTRACTION mode, this setting changes it so the Scanner Laptop would have a limited "sound ping" warning while scanning, or if you'd need to be close to it to get it (also affects Mandrillian Bots).

DOOR BLIPS: similar to the sprint blips, doors also have noise notifications on the Mandrillian's minimap. By default Mandrillians get notified if a door operates in a 60 meter radius from them, but with this setting you can change it to 30 or outright disable it.

DOOR HP: a multiplier to make closed Keycard-operated doors harder or easier to deal with for the Mandrillians by slamming them with physical attacks.

NIGHT VISION: by default, Mandrillians have a small cone of light (only visible to that particular Mandrillian) to help them navigate dark areas. This setting alternates between the always-on default, the light only being enabled when zooming in, or straight out disabling the light.

AIM ASSIST: a subtle "magnetic" aim assist when attacking as a Mandrillian; every time you do an attack the aim assist will draw a cone from your position, and adjust your attack direction if the Robot is within it. This setting can change the cone's size, as well as outright disable it if you want. Note that the Robot's "STEALTH" hull will reduce the aim assist cone's size.

ROBOT SETTINGS

The Robot (VR player) has the biggest amount of settings to tweak, so they're separated in three sections.

The first section is all about health, speed, and miscellaneous stuff.

HEALTH: a multiplier to your base HP.

HEALTH REGEN: by default, the Robot won't regenerate health by itself. With this setting you can cycle between OFF, SLOW, FAST and BLOOD (where exploding Mandrillians near you will give you a small heal)

SPEED: the base speed multiplier for the Robot.

SPRINT: by default WEAPON DOWN, to achieve max speed, you'll have to lower your weapon (if you're carrying one). If you change it to ALWAYS, you will bypass that requirement.

HEADSTART: the time Mandrillians will need to wait before being able to first spawn in the match. This is shared between human and NPC Mandrillians.

BODY: cycles betwen the Robot's hulls. Those are not just cosmetic, and have actual gameplay consequences: STEALTH makes it easier to hide in the shadows, and automatically cloaks items in your inventory. WARRIOR gives you a red glow, superior punching strength and the ability to block Mandrillian attacks with your arms (but the blocking will start wearing down if hit too many times). BLAST gives you massive damage reduction against explosives.

REVEAL POSITION: activates a small blip on the Mandrillians' minimap that will always show your location (unless cloaked). Makes the game extremely hard for the Robot, so use it for matches where the VR player is overpowered or to help new Mandrillian players get used to the map. It will also force the Insectoids to respawn on corpses near the Robot, instead of being completely random.

SLOTS+: gives the Robot two extra chest inventory slots.

WAYPOINTS: makes the match-critical elements (like medium and high level keycards) appear on the Multitool at all times, making them easier to find and helping new players who haven't learned the map layout.

HEADGEAR, FACE GEAR, BODY GEAR: purely cosmetic items (you can change them freely without effect on any selected Preset). Unlock them by completing Challenges or getting achievements.

MULTITOOL SETTINGS

This section changes the way your Multitool works (if you haven't disabled it via enabling Akimbo Mode). If you want, you can also grab the Multitool from its charger to get familiar with it.


TOTAL ENERGY: set up the multiplier for your Multitool's charge (note: for balancing purposes this will not affect the number of stun charges; those will always use up 25% of the total charge).

AUTO RECHARGE: by default the multitool will not charge by itself, needing either portable batteries or wall charging stations. This setting lets you enable auto-recharge, as well as the speed of it.

STUN: enables or disables the Multitool's electroshock stun feature (activated with your VR controller's trigger).

CLOAK: enables or disables the Multitool's cloak feature (activated with your VR controller's top button).

MOTION SENSOR: enables or disables the Multitool's motion sensor, which displays nearby enemies (the faster they're moving, the more pings it will display).

STUN POWER: the amount of time a stun charge will paralyze a Mandrillian; NORMAL for ~10 seconds, LOW for ~4 seconds.

WEAPON SETTINGS

This section manages the weapons you start with, the way ammunition works, and the kind of stuff you'll find around the map.


SIDEARM and LONGARM: by default, at the beginning of each match, you'll have a gun available to you on the floor. With those settings you can select the weapon you want to start with, as well as adding a longarm to the mix. You can also set them as random, or outright disable them. Note: the random pool does not include exotic weapons or unlockables, like the flashlight, dart gun, plasma gun, crossbow, or chainsaw.

SIDEARM/LONGARM AMMO: turns your middle inventory slot into an infinite supply of your last held sidearm/longarm (or both).

SIDEARM+MULTITOOL/AKIMBO MODE: by default, you'll have one sidearm that will go on one of your belt holsters, with the Multitool going to the other. "Akimbo mode" makes you start with two of your selected sidearms, and removes the Multitool from the match.

LOOT: changes the spawn pool and chances for all the loot present in the map, and inside the ammo crates. Some of them, like "Survivor" and "Soldier", also include a sort of "themed" progression with increasingly good weapons found on the weapon crates you find after each Magenta Keycard locked gate.

PREFERENCES, SOUND, AND WRIST MENU

After checking the Match Modifiers, let's have a quick look at the persistent player preferences. Those are meant to be basic settings to tailor the VR experience to your tastes. They will be saved between sessions, and some of them can be accessed at any point via the Wrist Menu.

The settings on the rightmost screen in the Main Menu are mostly graphical settings.

PC RESOLUTION: self explanatory. Changes the resolution for the PC players (does not change the VR resolution). Can be useful if you want to squeeze a bit of performance or improve Remote Local Play input lag; Escape from Mandrillia's UI is designed to be playable at very low resolutions.

SPLIT SCREEN: switches between horizontal and vertical split screen styles.

GAMMA: Escape from Mandrillia is a dark game, and many gamemodes rely on that. If you feel it looks too dark for your screen, tweak this setting (default 0.25).

INSECTOID SHADOWS: toggles dynamic shadows for the Insectoids. Can be graphically demanding on high infestation levels.

FINGER TRACKING: mainly for people using Valve Index controllers (but compatible with all SteamVR input compliant controllers). Toggles between individual finger tracking and preset hand poses.

FOOTSTEPS: by default, your own footsteps are disabled when playing as a Robot (the Mandrillians can still hear them) -this is due to the limitations of Steam Remote Play audio. However, you can enable this if you don't mind the PC side knowing if you're sprinting at the moment.

BLOOD TRAILS: enables or disables Mandrillian blood trails when they've been freshly wounded, are in critical condition, or have the Bleeding status effect.

FLICK OPEN BREAK ACTION: break action weapons, by default, can be opened in three ways: clicking on the barrel with your off hand, pressing the lower button on your VR controller (unless you use an inferior controller like the Vive Wands), and just flicking it open. If you fear accidental flicks, disable this setting; you'll have to either press the button or click on the barrel to open the weapon (you'll still be able to flick them closed)

WOUNDS: enables or disables the Zulubo's SkinGore™ System. It's just a visual setting that shows dynamic wounds on Mandrillians' bodies. Disable it to improve performance or if you find it too gruesome.

SOUND SETTINGS
This is where you can change the Mandrillian-specific audio target device. When playing over remote play, you only have to worry about it not being set to your headset (or whatever device the VR player is using). When playing in full local (or combining local with remote play), it should be set to whatever the player at your computer is using (remember to enable audio mirroring in this situation).

Here you can also enable the game's music (set off by default) -you can use custom music for this by following the instructions onscreen.

THE WRIST MENU
If you look at your left hand, you'll see a small device; it shows your current health, the mission timer, your overheat status and your shield status if applicable. You can use your other hand to press the MENU button on it to open a portable menu (accessible at all times), with three sections: MAIN, VR, and LIV.

The MAIN section has some quick-access actions: RESET SCENE (restarts whatever scene you are in), MAIN MENU (if applicable, sends you back to the Main Menu Scene), TIPS (same as the Main Menu option, it toggles the floating game tips), and SELF BOMB (while in a match, use this to detonate yourself, losing the game but at least getting a last laugh).

The VR section has the usual VR preferences. Most of them are self-explanatory.

VIRTUAL CROUCH: a setting to "virtually" crouch to ~75% of your calibrated height by pressing back on your camera controls (goes well with SEATED MODE).

SEATED MODE: this setting gives you a 40cm boost to your height and re-calibrates the in-game avatar accordingly.

LEFTY MODE setting has 4 stages: OFF (default), HOLSTER (same as OFF, but the gun and multitool holster positions are switched), CONTROLLERS (holsters stay the same as OFF, but moving/looking controls are switched), and FULL (combination of HOLSTER and CONTROLLERS).

ACCELERATION (by default set to SMOOTH) changes the way the VR player moves, either a smooth acceleration between speeds or a 1:1 translation of the stick's placement. Use whichever makes you less motion sick.

The LIV section tweaks some settings if you use LIV to get an extra spectator view (for recordings or streaming); most of this settings also apply to the standard spectator camera you get in Solo matches.

BUILT-IN SPECTATOR forces LIV's camera to use the game's own spectator solution (can be toggled between over-the-shoulder third person or stabilized first person view by using the FIRST PERSON toggle)

KEEP GAME AVATARS can be turned off to make the Robot/Scientist disappear from the LIV output, allowing you to use your anime furry avatar of choice from inside LIV.

SELF LIGHT switches the little self light the VR player has (best left off, as it's really meant to be just a help for the VR player to see their own arms/inventory in the dark)

DETACH CAM is a very experimental setting that fully detaches the LIV camera from the playspace. This can be useful in combination with the controller-operated LIV camera to get some interesting shots.

BONUS: CHEATS

You can input cheat codes on this screen.

The one on the post-it note, SPAWNER, will activate the item spawner gun which you can use to mess around in custom matches (game-altering cheats will be automatically disabled on challenges).

[Germanban]

If you're talking about the CEO office door, you need a max security clearance keycard (white), and the code is in an item in the map
SPOILERS:
The item is the lighter
The code is inside the lighter's lid
You can cheat all of this straight away by enabling the item spawner and spawning both the master keycard and the lighter
If you enter the room and grab the katana, you get an achievement and also unlock the katana on the item spawner

[clappy]

how do you open the level 4 door as in wheree is the code

[Taffer]

Zephyr rude AF. GTFO homie and learn a manner or two.

[charlie]

nobody cares whether you asked or not