|
Post by lodnir on Sept 3, 2015 14:58:11 GMT -6
Its dark. Very very dark. Your eyes snap open. It's still dark but less so now; there is a light coming from somewhere, where? All around your vision. Can you move? You try moving your limbs. Groan. Creeeeeeeeeeak. They are exceedingly numb and feel like they haven't been used in days but they appear to be functional. Still there is something odd. It feels as if you have grown another layer of skin, or if something your senses can't determine right now is clinging to you. It's hot, it's suffocating. What the hell is hap- You sit up and a paper falls off of your face. Welcome to purgatory 243-b, {insert name here}!Which by the way is an actual {insert name here} not your actual name (assuming you have one).
Because of a recent near death experience you may have encountered ( you don't have to try remembering it right now, inf act it might hurt a lot if you do) your soul has accidentally been sent here due to the exceptional circumstance of you being thrashed so soundly one of your local death gods was unsure if you were dead or not. Well good news for you is that your body is in fact alive! This is merely a waiting hall as we make the appropriate preparations to release your soul back to your respective realms.
Please note that however that {insert bureau name here} does not want you to feel like your death experience has been compromised in any way despite the harsh economic times; we have set up a number of arcade cabinets to emulate playing for your immortal soul with a psychopomp. We have provided appropriate coinage for you to enjoy these features as well as have laid out some small refreshments. PleAsE eNjOy Y0ur $t/\Y
No sooner do you finish reading the letter then does it burn up in front of your face in a most startling way. Leaving no smoke or ashes behind but 8 coins that fall into your lap. 3 large golden ones with a skull and crossbones on one side and wings and a halo on the other, and 5 smaller silver coins with a heart on one side and teardrops on the other.
Standing up and getting a better look at the room it appears to be a large re-purposed gymnasium. There are several dozen fold out tables with brightly colored vinyl tablecloths hosting a large array of sandwich, fruit, vegetable, and cookie platters (can souls even eat?). There is a table with a punch bowl and paper plates, plastic utensils, paper cups, etc. as well as thermos for tea and coffee. There is a water cooler near a back corner with a stack of fold out chairs. As far as you can tell there is no way inside or outside of this place though there is a row of eight doors off to one side that each lead to a private washroom (Do souls even need to poop?). There are high windows lining the entire space but unless you can fly or are willing to climb up there somehow all they are doing is letting in normal looking sunlight....from all sides. And lastly in the direct center of the gymnasium there are 7 equally spaced identical looking multi game arcade cabinets humming almost inaudibly; though they don't appear to be plunged into any power source you can see they appear to be working just fine.
What do.
|
|
|
Post by Tayl on Sept 3, 2015 16:41:32 GMT -6
Dying was nothing foreign to Dicro Corrune. Not quite dying but being mistaken for it and sent to some weird place with hors d'oeuvres? That was pretty new. He wasn't about to complain, though. This seemed like a pretty interesting situation, so he intended to embrace it just as he would on a ~magical subconscious adventure~. What was the worst that could happen? ...There were probably a lot of terrible things that could happen, but that was none of his concern. His concern was video games. After taking a moment to get his bearings and mentally go over what the short-lived note had told him. Emulating playing for his immortal soul with a psychopomp? That sounded like a thing that could be fun. Wasn't like there was much else to do aside from getting intoxicated on snacks. Which could come later if needed. Dicro pocketed his coins and headed over to one of the arcade cabinets, investigating it thoroughly but mostly just seeing how much it cost. "Geez, I haven't seen one of these in forever..." he thought out loud to himself. Lun liked to hang out at the arcade in the mall a lot, but Dicro was more of a console gamer. "Lun would probably die to be here," he snickered, expression quickly fading into disappointment because no one probably heard his sick pun...
|
|
|
Post by Exuro on Sept 3, 2015 22:11:29 GMT -6
"Heh. Nice one."
Apparently Dicro was not alone, it seems. A pair of figures rose from chairs over by the refreshment tables (despite not having partaken of anything on them), making their way over towards their newfound companion in death. One, clad in a beaten-up-looking suit of futuristic armor, seemed to be cautiously hanging back a bit, especially when compared to the relatively friendly one up front who had complimented Dicro's pun.
"Oh, and sorry to bug you... but are we dead? We seem dead, but this is not what either of us were expecting."
|
|
|
Post by lodnir on Sept 4, 2015 23:17:27 GMT -6
Upon closer inspection the arcade cabinet on the furthest right seemed to be out of order, with its screen frozen between 2 frames of a platformer where the player character was about to fall into a pit. The rest seemed ot be in perfect working order and accepting 2 "silver karmas" to play; a helpful tip informed Dicro that 1 "golden fate" translates into 5 silver karmas. There also appears to be an option for multiplayer with other local machines (each machine only has one joystick and set of buttons). If he choose to play, the multi game selection would display the following genres:
|
|
|
Post by Tayl on Sept 22, 2015 9:27:03 GMT -6
Someone appreciated his wordplay! This was the best day of Dicro's life. Actually today still kind of sucked but whatever "Well, I think so? Maybe," he "answered", taking a second to ponder. "That mysterious spontaneously combusting note implied that we were all just injured so badly that whoever's in charge of death around here just kind of assumed we were dead. Which would make sense, since I usually go somewhere else when I die, though then again I wouldn't be surprised if he got tired of doing my paperwork and just left me to deal with this Reality's default-"He stopped himself, realizing he was starting to ramble. "Ahem. So I guess the short answer is if we're not dead then we're close enough to it, especially since this place is apparently some kind of afterlife," he concluded sheepishly. "One with snacks and video games, though, so I'll take it."On that note, Dicro slipped the necessary coins into the machine and picked "random", feeling like he was decent enough at all of the genres listed. Dating sim! Dating sim!
|
|
|
Post by lodnir on Oct 7, 2015 14:39:54 GMT -6
The matte black metal took the coinage impassively but also voraciously, a civil servant beset by deep crippling addiction. The colourful swirling palette of pixels and sprites then rearranged themselves into a row of miniature cartoon animals all standing in a row on a black backdrop. All bowing in unison before exiting the screen stage left. There was something implacably and disturbingly ritualistic about the whole affair and Dicro would probably look at cults composed of super deformed animals in a different light from now on. Another victim of modern media. After not too long of a time spent staring at a pitch black screen with the after taste of strange religions still lingering. The picture sprung to life again with sedating and exhilarating colors that promised instant gratification and consequence free violence. ALLEYWAYS OF ANGER An impact title filled the screen with the texture of bricks. A chip tune reminiscent of both alleyways and anger cheerfully beeped and booked out from the cabinet's unseen speakers before the game abruptly started you in alleyway. There was a pixel art depiction of Dicro on screen complete with extremely poor posture and fists half heartedly raised, looking more poised to push a shopping cart filled with goods to his captors at the first sign of violence. The user interface was simple, in bright yellow text it displayed the 3 hearts of your health, two empty squares labelled "weapon" and "hold", a score count that read 0, and a lives section that was empty. More than grim psychoanalysis or a philosophical statement though, you suppose the credits were only enough to buy one play. The game seemed to be a side stroller and you were standing in the left edge of the screen in a super typical urban brick alleyway. Nay, the archetypal alleyway of what we mean when we say alleyway. Anyways you were the only object on screen other than scenery like garbage cans and puddles. If there was anything that needed punching it was further ahead. Or you could punch the puddle. It probably has it coming. Who does it think it is, sitting there in the middle of the path like that.
|
|
|
Post by Tayl on Feb 14, 2017 23:56:46 GMT -6
Dicro made his way through the introduction with a squint and a raised eyebrow, fortunately escaping its horrors relatively untraumatized. The game itself surprised him far more than the darkness that came before it. This, of course, was of little surprise: Dicro dealt with the ominous and horrid on a daily basis. What lied beneath the facade of the super-deformed could do nothing to shake him. Mostly, though, he was just excited to see a sprite of himself on the screen. "No way! I'm kind of adorable..." he said excitedly to himself, beaming. As Dicro was a friend to all beings, he graciously spared the puddle and instead experimented with the buttons a bit to orient himself and see if there were any quirks in store for him before attempting to move onward
|
|
|
Post by lodnir on Feb 15, 2017 1:11:58 GMT -6
As Dicro experimented with the joypad, the controls weren't as tight as he'd had hoped but it was faithful to the image of a slightly retro arcade machine so it had its charms. Of the six buttons he played around with, two of them seemed to be identical chain attacks though pressing one of the buttons made the "weapon" square flash as he pressed it. Another button seemed to cause his character to jump. The fourth was a quick roll. Fifth caused the "hold box" to flash but otherwise seemed to do nothing. And the last button caused chains to appear and pierce a good length in front of him, though the animation took a long time and there was a slight delay before he could begin inputting any commands.
|
|
|
Post by Tayl on Feb 15, 2017 3:02:22 GMT -6
"Neat. They really went all-out on the accuracy stuff here. Wonder who made this thing, or if this is mostly just a figment of my imagination," he wondered out loud, entirely unconcerned about how much this video game knew about him. If anything, it just made him more excited! Dicro moved his character - well, himself? - forward, ready for a thrilling world of pixelated violence and privacy invasion!!
|
|
|
Post by lodnir on Feb 15, 2017 23:23:21 GMT -6
A Dicro-sprite shuffled down further the alleyway, accompanied by a pleasant chiptune saccharine enough to cause 32-bit cavities, Dicro couldn't help but notice the detail that went into proliferating the vibrant stagescape. Cracks in the pavement had tufts of some sort of vegetation poking through, there was an expectant amount of liter animating in the virtual breeze, the faint techno-mimicry of distant cars and traffic subtly permeated the ambiance, the giant skeletal grim reaper that suddenly floated from the opposite side of the scenery sending out tiny floating spirit projectiles this way and that. Ah the cosmopolitan lifestyle. Though the reaper seemed to either be indifferent or unaware of Spritecro, simply shuffling in place and sending out more of those weird ghost spirit things that vanished a few steps from the reaper. Cityfolk am I right?
|
|