The First Quest
Since I already got all the stuff I needed I didn´t have to go to my office today but instead drove straight to the company I had work to do. Clark waited for me by the doorstep, like he always does. I like him a lot, not many of my costumers appreciate my work and my ethics as much as he does. I care for both, my company and my customers, I guess that´s what makes me well received most of the time.
I had around 4 hours of boring work to do, after that, I drove straight home. I did a bit in the household (mainly cleaned my desk and the kitchen, it´s the only stuff that gets dirty anyway) and hopped to a grocery store to get food for the weekend. I thought about doing some cooking but in case more quests pop up I figured I´d rather maximize my time spent playing instead of having to cook. So I bought a bunch of bread, pre-cut salami and some instant food to get me through. Oh yeah and Red Bull. God, I love that stuff.
"Clock shows 2 PM, plenty of time to finish a game before I get tired. I hope I don´t lose motivation, this is some serious business now."
I start the game. I chose a Metroidvania type because roguelikes can take forever to finish and the quest said I had to finish it in one go. So here I am, downloading a game I bought years ago for the first time. I don´t know what's wrong with me in that regard. I buy so many games but rarely finish them, and sometimes I don´t even touch them. Like with this one.
It´s a game about a small mouse-like creature that I have to navigate through a giant forest filled with hazards. The opening cutscene was sad as fuck when the big mama whatever thing died. So I start my conquest of healing the decaying forest with little abilities. All I can do is Jump and slowly shoot some electric based homing attack. Kinda boring so far. While traveling and dieing almost a couple of times I discovered a few new abilities such as wall jumping/climbing and double jump. This opens up a lot of paths where I couldn´t go to before. That´s the spirit of a full-fledged Metroidvania right there.
After 2 hours of playtime, I get reminded that I should take a short break, get hydrated and grab a small snack. I always drink too little, so I grabbed a bottle of self-carbonated water and put that almost in front of my screen so I don´t forget it. I´m loving the game so far, really immersive and oh god that soundtrack. It´s giving me the chills whenever a new song is playing.
"Back to work", I said to myself. "I wonder, actually, why I even think that this is real. I mean, yeah, I´m a gamer and all, stuff like a magical Journal should come naturally to me. But in my fundamental soul, I´m way more science-based than spiritual. Wich, I could say I´d rather believe in stuff that can be explained through science and thinking, rather than believing. Although I heard the argument that magic is just another type of science that we can´t understand yet so there´s that point to make. Well, I don´t know, at least it definitely won´t hurt me but instead gets my ass going."
Back to the game where I last saved I open the map to check new paths I didn´t have access to when I last visited them, found a couple power-ups, which should probably make the rest of the game a bit easier, fought a few new enemies that shot some nasty looking green poison balls at me, evaded some rhinoceros-like type that I apparently couldn´t defeat yet and found myself at the base of a towering tree, bigger than anything I´ve seen in the game.
I go to a stone tablet which I recognized by now as a thing that gives me a new power-up. I collected it and this ability was by far my most favorite by now. Basically, whenever I found an enemy or a projectile I could shoot myself in my desired direction from the projectile. This made the game insanely fast and dynamic.
At this point, I played for 3ish hours in total and the game told me I completed around 40% of the game. I figured with my new ability and my skill I can zoom right past a lot of the content, which I intended to do.
Taking my last break I take a look at my phone with several missed messages in Whatsapp. Most of them were just group notifications but a friend of mine also asked for a round at that new tank shooting game that we recently found, which is also a lot of fun, boasting a whopping number of over 200 different types of shots. It´s the type of game where you are mostly stationary and you have to calculate a lot with shooting power and angles.
As I felt myself severely distracted again I put down my phone and slapped my cheeks with both my hands again.
"Focus, Deva! This is not the time to get distracted. This probably won´t work anyway and after that, you can do what you want again. It´s not like you don´t want to play this beauty of a game so keep your head in the game. Höhö, no pun intended."
After giggling at myself for a couple of seconds I went back to the game. With my new Jumping ability, I sped through the game, dieing a lot because I stopped evading and killing a lot of stuff and just ran after the circles the game told me where to go to. Lots of story and about 2 hours later I found myself at a lava-filled lake where a gigantic owl tried to chase me. Honestly, this was the most difficult part of the game. Jumping, running, dashing, using that amazing ability that I got which I don´t have a word for, climbing and gliding and lots and lots of it. High intensity and hostility for like 4 minutes straight that required a lot of focus. One misstep and the owl gets you.
That part alone took me probably around 30 minutes. At least I satisfied the required playtime with that.
After enjoying the last scene of the game where the forest was restored to new life and the thing from the beginning got resurrected I closed the game, enjoying the feeling of a finished game in what felt like forever.
"Such an amazing game. No idea why I never finished it. Gave me the feels. I also never thought that that owl wasn´t evil but just trying to protect her children. Sigh."
I go to my balcony and fish out some cigarettes from my jacket pocket.
"I deserve these now. That whole game wasn´t that big, it took me like 5 hours and 30 minutes to finish it but that was with my non-completionist style of just following the main story. You could probably get around 10ish hours of playtime out of it and the replayability seems nice as well."
After I finished smoking I go back to the journal. I try to stay calm but stuff like this doesn't happened too often in life. I get really shaky hands whenever I´m too nervous and this time is no exception.
I sit on my sofa again opening the book. The first and second page didn´t seem different at all. With the introduction and the stat page listing the exact same stuff as yesterday. But when i opened the quest page i noticed something different.
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Quest Page
0 Quest out of ? currently in progress.
Completed quests show at the back of the book.
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After reading that I flipped the book around and opened the "last" page and there it actually stood:
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Quests completed: 1 out of ?
- A lazy gamer.
-- You haven´t finished a game in forever. It´s time to get you up to speed. Play through a Metroidvania or a Roguelike in one sitting.
Min. Playtime: 4 Hours
Platform: PC
Breaks: Every hour for up to 10 minutes. Keep yourself hydrated!
Reward: 1 Skill Point; 1 Mystery Box
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At that exact time, I hear my doorbell ringing. I reluctantly close my book and go to the door. I couldn´t see anyone again but there was a heavy looking wooden box at my doorstep.
I bring it in, place it on the table and run straight back to the Journal. I opened that stats page and saw something new that I didn´t see the last time. It´s quite small and there is a lot of text so I probably missed it.
At the bottom of the stats page was a new line.
.Skill points available: 1
To use skill points write down a + with the corresponding number next to the gaming stats. Body stats can´t be increased.
I finally knew what's going on. This book is the real deal. At least I thought. My scientific mind wouldn´t allow me to think such thoughts but I wanted to believe. I figured since my luck was so low I should probably increase that first. I grab my favorite pen with a broad ending that makes nice lines and skillfully write a +1 next to my luck attribute.
Now all I had to do was wait.