Somber Expectations

[kyonides]

Chapter Three

Game Making

Based on my experience as a gamer and forumer, I might assume people like us end up wishing they could make their own game. Sometimes it is just a remake alias a terribly stupid version of it but the developers simply ignore its flaws for good. Yeah, I was one of those that would love to collect monsters and make them fight other horribly deformed monsters. My game project was as lame as many other games that have been uploaded to web hosting sites around the world. Gladly it got lost, now it is impossible for it to stalk me for the rest of my life, he, he.

Time changed my stupid mind. I suddenly cared about original stories but I did not plan to buy lots of graphical resources. Thus I kept using many default assets the game engine I had picked offered to all of us, the inexperienced indie developers. Naming it was not difficult for me at all, it was called “Detective Alex”. This game featured a young cop pretending to be an actual detective of sorts. His very first case was high schooler murdered right in front of its large gates. His main problem was that he did not care about preserving the scene intact for he dared to kick the body several times.

A dry tongue made me stand up later on. I decided that it was a good time for drinking some cold soda. The day was cloudy as usual so I would discard the heat as my main motive to leave my computer. Even so I could not get rid of that stubborn thirst of mine.

“Didn’t you hear about her? She’s been killed early this morning!” a worried mother told her ignorant neighbor.

“Huh? Just don’t tell me they assigned the case to Detective Alex, please!” I asked of them.

“Who’s Alex? Oh wait a sec! You mean Alex Comey, right? I think they actually did!” the woman seemed to have remembered him somehow.

Just in case you still ignore it, I had jumped to this futuristic world once again. Your servitor was surrounded by lots of gossipers out of the blue. Those who were not talking were texting or emailing their contacts at a fast pace. Finding out I had predicted their future while making that silly game of mine was terrifying indeed.

“Oh crap! If I were his superior, I wouldn’t trust his interrogation skills at all!” I sadly had to warn them about him.

My mind badly needed some rest so I left the neighborhood at once. I preferred to worry about my next parttime job, I would definitely need one if I ever wanted to survive there. Few blocks from my starting location I found the Blueberry Cake bakery, a small but lively store with some unique smell. That quickly reminded me I had not have lunch, yet.

The baker was truly desperate because his shelves got empty in no time. Normally that would be great news for his business, still, he had no helpers and he had to take care of completing every single task one could think off. Really, I looked for a cashier to no avail. He soon hired me and thought me how to operate the cash register that appeared to be more advanced than those present in the twenty first century. I was thankful and did not worry a lot about my future there. How foolish!

“Hey mister! I’m detective Alex, Alex Comey and I’ve got a few questions for you!” the blatantly stupid cop stated right in front of poor me.

“I’m sorry to tell you this but I’ve started working here this morning so I doubt I can ever help you with your investigation, sir” I warned him just in case I could get of that ugly situation.

A worried Alex then asserted “Oh I see! Then you might not know if there’s any pistaccio cupcakes left here. How terrible!”

“Boss, I told you so! We had to come before noon but you never listen to me!” his assistant grounded him from a distance, not caring about the other patrons present there.

Usually I would be in need of talking about Comey’s partner but that was not his case. My educated guess would be that he was not being treated as a real detective by the police department so he had to hire his own personal assistant instead. Based on my game project, he was appointed as a detective after his grandfather had made some calls to his captain to ensure he would never ever dare to reject his grandson’s job application.

Seriously, dear readers of my sad story, both Comey and his lackey did worry me for a moment. Their mere presence at the Blueberry Cake bakery was capable of driving me crazy. What happened next seemed to be a real nightmare to anybody who had tested my videogame back in my own timeline.

“Ho! Ho! It’s my old friend Alex! Why took you so long?” my new boss commented to my dismay.

I later realized Comey might have become one of his best patrons ever for he was addicted to his cupcakes. He always tried to pass by two or three times a day if possible. Out of all the available job positions I had to pick exactly the one that would force me to deal with that loon on a daily basis!

“By the way, sir, aren’t you the same guy that had left the renowned VRex Studio late at night?” the detective had to question me.

“Dunno whatcha talking ‘bout, detective!” I replied unable to come up with a good excuse at all.

“I see. Well, it doesn’t really matter!” Alex added. “For some reason I thought you were the same man that stumbled upon me back then making me drop my coffee. I’d have sent you the dry cleaner’s bill otherwise, ha, ha!”

That was definitely the kind of stuff I had to avoid while visiting the future. That comment made me recall a time where I thought I had hit something but I could not tell for sure what it was. I was in a hurry after all. If Comey was right about his coffee, how was I supposed to pay such a bill? I would only have earned nothing but a few e-coins by the end of the shift!

Fresh Start

After such a traumatic experience I vowed to begin the development of a whole new game that night. It was nicknamed “A Short Odyssey”, a project based on a lot of ideas I had dropped long time ago. My goal was clear, I would finish my first role playing game and several improvements I made for the game engine strongly motivated me.

For some reason making a game has never been interesting so I wound up crafting custom scripts due to my natural affinity to writing fantasy stories, composing poems and working with large amounts of text.

The graphics design department still looks like a mirage, something I could never grab with my own hands no matter how many hours I spend on drawing or editing any image. Right, the only exception I could recall now would be those over one hundred and sixty smileys I have published on the board. This lead me to depend on default graphical resources for the gazillionth time.

Don’t you hate when you have to come up with clever names for your game characters? I certainly do, like the day I could not even name the protagonist. Getting bored of not finding any decent inspiration, I ended up calling that guy Kyonides. Yeah, I know I am not quite original, though I can tell you it is an unusual penname for sure.

My next developer’s block was how to prevent him from becoming just another Gary Stu. How could I pick the least number of my personal traits as building blocks for his own personality? Things were getting more and more complicated, making me wish I were a newcomer that does not care about quality but just telling his darn story to his target audience. At the end the lead character was a young guy that usually wears some jacket, a black one if available. He was living alone at a peaceful town that would be located far from the capital city.

Later that night I came up with other characters like Arylianna the rebellious elf girl who wanted to explore the world. Do never ask me why I am obsessed with adding a female elf to my cast, I just did. After a few weeks or months I realized my list of heroes was insipid so to say, and I still needed to write a story about how they would begin their journey.

Such a troublesome disconformity lead me to creating another female character, namely Mel. She was Kyonides’s younger sister with a personality loosely based on a board member. Thus she had to become a dreamer no matter what. Her struggle would be not to sound like a total lunatic every single time she wanted to tell other people about the strange dreams she had the previous night. Believe me when I tell you it was hard to overcome the temptation of making her behave like a true paranoid or a zealot of sorts.

It turned out I preferred to write the siblings’ story, making it a slightly unrelated light novel, before I would continue developing the game. This decision allowed me to take a break from gathering and customizing character sprites and battlers. Nonetheless I had had a weird sensation for quite some time since I started writing it. You see, it feels as if I were suddenly disguised as a mage of a very distant land in my dreams. Then I seemed to be trying to reach some girl, probably my lovely Mel. Becoming a night stalker was not my goal at all I can assure you, he, he. Anyway Mel has never been born in this world or anywhere else right?

“Hey Wulfo! I’m suspecting I’ve been having weird dreams as of late” I let my cyber friend know.

“Man, it’s late! I’m hitting the sack now for I’ve been falling asleep a few times by now” Mike told me one night while talking in the chat room.

“/quit” I entered in the chat box and closed the connections at once and turned off my computer in order to get ready to sleep like a baby. Sadly, I could only fall asleep after midnight, though I soon had a very realistic dream.

There I was searching for a certain dreamer, namely Melana. Oh and this time I, the mysterious mage in black, was chasing her down. In my humble opinion it appeared that I was trying to seduce the naive girl. My real intentions were later revealed, I actually wanted to steal her dreaming powers to increase my own at once. After a while I managed to kidnap her as if I were compelled by some strange force to do so. When I woke up I just thought, while laughing at me, that I envied Mel for her ability to sleep for nine or twelve hours a day.

Next time I was transported to a parallel world, I was no longer in the megalopolis full with its virtual reality rooms. This time I was in the middle age or something the like. Why don’t you place your bet on how I was dressed that evening? You know, by now you would have won lots of money if you had picked the black robe. Oh yes! I had become the evil wizard somehow! By the way, I was sitting at the table and a waitress approached me then.

“What would you prefer? Maybe you’d love some beer or ale or even mead” she quickly suggested.

“Bring me some Lomena, please!” I jokingly ordered, knowing beforehand that beverage did only exist in an old story of mine.

“Wow! You’re lucky, sir! We’ve just bought a few kegs this morning!” the gorgeous waitress continued. “Please be patient, I’ll be bringing you three jars of Lomena in a blick of an eye!”

Surprisingly, she kept her word and brought the jars full of my fictitious drink I do not know how. Not long after I felt like I had crossed to the twilight zone or the dream world had caught me off guard. For I could never believe that was happening for real, I simply got wasted and even forgot if I ever ordered some dish at all.

Here is where things got a bit complicated. You see, I had no money to pay my tab. They would hardly accept dollar or euro bills there. The bartender would kill me if I ever tried to use my credit card to make my payment.


“Your face makes me think you’re in troubles, my friend. Feel free to keep drinking, I’m gonna take care of your tab. Thus you’d only need to do me a lil’ favor in exchange” a man in his forties explained after taking a seat.


Since then I have been trying to find any clue leading to the virtual reality rooms I visited in the futuristic world but all my efforts seemed to have been futile. Besides I have other questions that remained unanswered. Who was that middle aged man? Where did he come from?

To be continued

Probably next year!