You must have heard the phrase “Life’s just a bad game” before, right? I’m sure you have. Does “You can’t hit the reset button on life” ring any bells? How about “Life’s just shovelware”?
It all sounds so depressing, doesn’t it? Just hearing those words would drag down any semblance of good vibes, so let's think about it for a moment. If you compared real life to the countless amount of ‘good games’ in the world, you'd probably be hard-pressed not to discount it as just another ‘bad game’. Ah, but there’s more to it than just that.
See, life may be a ‘bad game’—I don’t disagree with you—but it all comes down to perspective, don’t you think? You’re only going to find one of those so-called ‘good games’ by going through life itself, after all.
So what if you can’t hit the reset button on life? There are a myriad of games without them. It's a little old-fashioned, don't you think? What I’m trying to say is... If you’re a gamer who thinks life’s just a ‘bad game’, then maybe you just need to level up a little, and find some new ways to enjoy it. I may be coming off as high and mighty, and maybe a tad bit overbearing; but if you got thrown all the way down to the bottom of a ravine, that was so deep it looked like a natural wonder without any trace of civilization—all while wearing a business suit—anyone would want to escape from reality. It kinda feels like: “Damn, this game's hard mode is tougher than I thought.”
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Anyway, let’s slow down and take a look around. The guys that panic always die first in movies, novels... and FPS games. Being in a bit of a hurry would be the natural reaction if you fell down a ravine after a car accident or something, but I couldn’t help but remain calm given these circumstances. After all, I was a gamer that had spent his whole life playing games, and I intend to keep it that way.
There was one thing that caught my eye while I surveyed the bottom of the valley. A translucent character board, similar to those UI (User Interface) windows you see so often in games, was floating out near my right hand. Even with so much reality right in front of me, the game-like window near my right hand gave me a curious sense of security.
—Well, at least I wasn't thrown down to the center of the earth.
I got a better picture of the situation as I observed the surrounding area. I was at the bottom of an extremely deep ravine that was being bathed in sunlight. Up past the horizon line was a cliff face that went as far as the eye can see. And from what I could tell, the bottom of the ravine ran down about 30 to 40 meters. The walls all around me were also nearly completely vertical. Climbing something that steep was out of the question. It looked to be about 50 meters to the top of the cliff, and I was a good 100 meters down into the valley itself.
The ravine looked almost as if someone stabbed the earth with a giant knife. From where I was standing it seemed to be about 100 meters out to the farthest point off in the distance, and probably went even further. You’d think it’d be difficult for sunlight to reach the bottom of a ravine this deep unless it was right above it, but the smooth polished surface of the ravine's walls acted like giant natural softboxes, and diluted the sunlight through the forest's trees.
The walls themselves were made of hard rock, but the ground was just soft black soil. You could even see a few weeds and a bit of moss here and there. Overall there didn’t seem to be that much water, but a small amount oozed out of the walls in scattered places, and created tiny waterfalls and small pods in the soil. The confluence of the tiny water streams created small rivers and ponds that led down into the ravine's floor.
The water looked crystalline and safe to drink, so I wouldn’t have to worry about thirst, at least. Curiously, there were a few tiny trees sprinkled about with twisted trunks, and beautifully bright soft leaves spread out over the valley, too. But there didn’t seem to be any animals around. It was like the whole place one big walled off garden.
—If this place was naturally occurring, it’d definitely apply for world wonder status. Heck, if it was made by people, it’d be an effort worthy of a god.
If it wasn’t for the handmade cabin standing behind me, which disrupted the tranquility of this otherwise beautiful microcosm of nature, I would have believed it if you told me this place was called Paradise or Eden. Between the seemingly randomly generated topography, climate, and vegetation, this idyllic mountain forest almost looked like something straight out of “Forest Simulator 2012 ~Botany Glory~”. The sheer magnitude of the overflowing green miracle around me was nothing short of staggering. All in all, I didn’t think it would even be possible to replicate this wonder of nature in a game and do it justice.
I turned my attention to the strange translucent UI window next to my right hand. When I touched it, the window started displaying alphanumeric characters based in English.
—Huh? This windows states I’m inside a game... But everything around me looks way too real. It also shows my real name as my display name. I’m not one of those that people who puts their real names in games. This can’t be right... Can it?
Pretty polished UI for a game, but it wasn’t quite all there still—not newbie friendly at all. It would be so much nicer to look at if it was just a little bit more graphical. It was going to bug me every time I looked at it, surely.
I may have been thrown into a really strange situation, but having fun wherever you find game-like elements was what I would call a gamer’s duty. I tried operating the translucent window filled with characters, and pushed my fingertip against a spot that said ‘Status’. A window popped up to display:
Aoi Kousaka
<Apprentice Labyrinth Manager>
Vitality : 21/21 Stamina : 56/58 Willpower : 13/14
Skill(s) : <Dungeon Management Tool> <Appraisal>
Let me be honest with you, I couldn’t care less about the situation I was in right now. Going nuts over a potentially fun element was what being a gamer was all about. If this UI floating above my hand was set to be a menu, then I was used to it already. You could even say it was simple compared to recent games, nowadays.
I opened the configure settings in the UI window.
I sort of relied on my intuition to navigate through all the options, and customized the interface. I managed to come up with something rather similar to an internet browser interface that I was used to, called “WaterRacoon”. The UI window didn’t have much of a force feedback response when I touched it. It seemed more like a typical smartphone touch screen.
I fixed the status screen in place and brought up a new tab, scrolled through the menu’s summary, and clicked on the ‘Skill List’ option. My heart felt as if it was going to beat its way out of my chest as my fingertip touched the <Dungeon Management Tool> skill.
I’d played countless dungeon, farm, and city management games by now. The goals and objectives may change depending on the game, but the basics were always the same: Raise monsters as guardians of the dungeon to go against the pathetic intruders that dare set foot into it, expand the dungeon with the power of magic to confuse trespassers, install vicious and beautiful traps causing mental fatigue of the intruders from the surface, et cetera. Administering an evil dungeon was a genre that really kicked off in recent years.
When I pressed the <Dungeon Management Tool> a separate window popped up. The new window had various new settings, such as <Terrain Improvement Tool> and <Structure Creation - Outer Wall> next to it.
—Heheh, so the <Dungeon Management Tool> has all these bundled into one skill, huh? Pretty cool.
I selected the <Terrain Improvement Tool> among all the options and tapped the ‘Execute’ button. All of a sudden my body felt heavier, and at the same time something fell in front of me with a metallic clunk on the floor.
—Is that an iron pickaxe? And a shovel?
The two items that fell right in front me were a metal pickaxe, and a shovel that looked big enough to wield with two hands. When I took a look at the status screen, I noticed my ‘Willpower’ had decreased from 13/14 to 3/14. It seemed the magical Willpower thing acted as some Magic Points (MP) of sorts, and was depleted to activate the skill.
—Yep, these definitely are terrain improvement tools, alright. You can change how the world looks with the pickaxe if you keep at it long enough.
More specifically: Digging into the ground, breaking stones, and shoveling dirt.
“I-Isn’t this a little too hardcore!?”
My yell echoed out across the sunlight-bathed ravine.
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