HAPPY FIFTH ANNIVERSARY!

By: Porter

A rare breaking of the fourth wall but it’s a special occasion! 

Bizzy Mart officially turns five years old! It has been half a decade since the story and game began and went public, respectively. Over the last five years, there have been a lot of adventures and memories that have been made. We’ve been introduced to many colorful characters over the years as well. We began with a limited cast of characters when the game launched; we were first greeted by Sid— a cashier worker at the remote Bizzy Mart and then upon entering the fridge, we were greeted by Figment in the Backrooms, Telly at the TV and Nate at the Cinema!

Since then, we’ve met more characters over the years with Lucid making his grand appearance around two months after the game’s release. Lucid was first pretty mysterious, but over time, we managed to learn more about his life, his conflicts, and his personality. He’s become a very good and trustworthy friend of ours! While not all of our adventures featured Lucid, different cast members made their spotlight in different adventures. To this day, we’re still meeting new characters important to the story, but will all of them be friends?

No matter where the story goes from here, we’re still all very much awaiting to see what it brings. After all, Lucid still hasn’t had his true redemption yet. So when will redemption come? Well…that’s up for you to witness and find out! We have more stories to be written, more adventures to head on, and more dreams to be dreamt! The last five years have been eventful so let’s make the next five even more so! Happy fifth anniversary, Bizzy Mart! Here’s to the next one…cheers!

TOP FIVE ADVENTURES FROM THE PAST

By: Timely

Well hello fellow Tribune readers and Bizzy Mart travelers! It is I, Timely, here once more with a special article in the newspaper!

As we celebrate five years, I want to go back in time and list my top five favorite adventures we’ve gone on since 2021! There have been several favorites so it’s hard to pick! I think I’ve made up my mind and decided to go with these five in no particular order!

We found Wonderland: Remember back in 2022 when we had our first big adventure that didn’t even take place in the dream world? We went into the fictional world of Wonderland after poor little Willy came into our world by accident! We’d safely returned him and met new friends along the way, though we’d find out that Wonderland, too, had been having some strange happenings!

Over the river, through the woods: Nothing said summer like heading out into the wilderness of the dream world! We decided to take a tour into the vast wilderness and see some unique landmarks out there in 2024. Yet little did we know was that a certain someone was lurking out there and by “out there” I mean under our feet! Francis had built an underground lair below the wilderness and we had no idea…

I ain’t afraid of no ghosts: Remember when ghosts were let loose all over the dream world for Halloween 2023? We had to travel all the way down to the famed Quartier Fantôme to figure out what the heck was going on! We learned Francis tried getting an army of spirits to help him take over the dream world but these spirits weren’t so on board. We had Almoral’s help to lure them back to their home, but hey, Halloween that year was truly spooky, no?

Ignorance is strength: Another adventure into a fictional world, though this world was a nightmare! The world of Big Brother, where books are banned and destroyed, and rights are limited to few, saw us try to save our own books from getting used in a machine for bad use! This is also where we finally met who was behind all the anomalies in the dream world in 2023 and of course, it was Francis! The books were saved thankfully but wow, who would be evil to destroy books?

The underground: Perhaps the most notable adventure thus far has been traveling deep underground to Francis’ lair! After causing a massive snow storm and blackout, we ventured deep to find and arrest him at long last but not before having to stop his portal from self-destructing! Daiki’s gamble proved true when Lucid appeared at the last moment to stop the portal from exploding and it really did look like Lucid’s save would have granted him better days ahead…but alas!

So many adventures that we’ve had and yet I could only list my five favorite ones so far! Perhaps in five years, when it’s time to list my top ten adventures, some of these will repeat themselves. But like I say, time will tell and time sure likes to tell a lot of stories. Here’s to the next five years, which not to give any sneak peeks of the future, but it sure looks both dark…and bright!

Q/A: Ask the creator

Dear Adri, are there any old rooms you plan on giving big makeovers?

By: May Kuver 

Hi May! There are a lot of rooms that have existed since the beginning of the game. Many of these rooms were added in the beginning of the game to both showcase and give an idea of what I was trying to convey with the overall theme of the game which was liminality. Like many similar games, the rooms are based off of and inspired by real-life images that give off that “liminal” feeling.

That being said, many old rooms have not necessarily been touched up too much since they were released. Sure, there have been some retouches, additions and expansions to existing rooms, but actual makeovers are rare. I think some notable rooms that deserve makeovers would be the Game, Circus, Portables, Apartments, and Castle. Off of the top of my head, these are the rooms that I’ve constantly kept in mind when looking to actually revisit and give a big retouch to.

For example, the Game dimension is very tiny. Only consisting of two rooms, they’re both small and compact. The same can be said about the Castle which is also two small and compact rooms. In the future, I’m going to try and remodel these rooms so they’re bigger with more to see and explore. In the case of the Apartments, I’ve wanted to incorporate *that* photo of the apartment complex liminal space picture for a while now! I’m hoping to add that, perhaps, in the next year.

I would always like to hear what people want to see retouched personally! If you have suggestions for rooms that could use a bit of a makeover, I’d love to know so I could try adding it to a list. As the years come and go, more rooms will be added and older rooms may get left behind, but I’ll try my best to really keep things polished without them getting too dusty!

Dear Adri, We see a lot of manga in Bizzy Mart, so what manga, comics, movies, or anime inspired the story and characters?

By: A.S. Leep

Hello A! It’s true that there are various manga and anime easter eggs in the game. When the game first launched, there was actually a bookshelf of manga behind Sid at the mart itself! Since there are references here and there, there are  some inspirations behind parts of the story and some characters.

In Lucid’s case, I likened him to Satoru Gojo from the series JuJutsu Kaisen. Like Gojo, Lucid is pretty powerful, but his own powers seem to be a conflict with both the world around him and himself; also, the two of them have some very pretty eyes that seem to glow! Lucid was also inspired by Matilda from the movie of the same name. Matilda in that movie gained her powers from reading lots and lots of books, and if you know Lucid, he’s a very avid book lover who’s read countless books throughout his life thus making him who he is today. In the mart’s case, I likened the area surrounding Bizzy Mart to that of the fictional sleepy town of Gravity Falls deriving from the Disney show of the same name. Gravity Falls has some pretty odd characters and phenomena going for it so the area around the mart has that same vibe since, y’know, Bizzy Mart is home to the biggest vortex in the real world leading to the dream world!

Other inspirations include Club Penguin, which has a lot of influence in certain events and the soundtrack heard in the game! Stranger Things has also had some influence on the game with some of the supernatural and government conspiracy themes. Additional inspiration for characters and the story have stemmed from other sources like Genshin Impact, My Hero Academia, Omega Mart, and more! It’s nice when people recognize references or make allusions to other pieces of media they see similarities to.