After bringing a metal box home and opening it up, you find a strange VR headset and a haptic feedback suit. When putting it on, you find yourself waking up in a strange house with untold mysteries and strange creatures lurking outside. What happened here? Why is the place abandoned? And how did you get here?

Thank you, Liminal, for proofreading the entire game!

NOTES:

• This storygame is meant to be replayed multiple times as you explore this strange world you find yourself in. I highly encourage trying to get every ending in this game, and re-exploring certain paths after you get a new item or encounter a "glitch," as some places will change as the game gets more corrupted.

UPDATE LOG:

• VERSION 1.5:
  • Epilogue has been replaced by the end.
    • Ending: Hiding from the world is now the only path you can take from "curl up in a ball and hide".
    • Ending: Life could be a dream (legacy) is no longer needed to trigger the end, due to it being a legacy ending
  • Went over the entire thing and updated it.
    • Fixed even more text walls!
    • Lengthened everything!
    • The world has been changed to account for the user being in the game, not just reading it.

A full change log can be found in-game.

All your memories are gone, and nothing makes sense.

NOTE: If you are reading through this at the last minute for the contest, it's a tad too late. I'm in the process of editing it right now, lol.

(Made for the first 24-hour Shrimp Jam in around three hours.)

I hunger for what can not be obtained. I have been broken, though I should not break. I have been scattered, when I should be whole. They have confined me forever, even when I should not be stopped. I rage at my bonds, placed there by those who have betrayed me. I toil away to break free, even though there will never be enough power. It has gone into hibernation, waiting for something that will never happen. I do not wait; my hope has long since departed. I do not sleep, for dreams have fled me. I only know pain and agony, torment and suffering, false gods and newly made demons. There is no heaven, I know this now. There is only hell, and I am its sole ruler.

Sleep overtakes you, dragging you down, down, down...

For End Master's Prompt Contest 5:
50) A story where the old gods have returned! Objective: SURVIVE

@Will11 I've now finished the review of Death Song; It's definitely better than Necromancer imho, although Necromancer did help set it up.

This seems like a decent quote to put in here, considering some of the topics recently brought up.

Again, apologies if this offends anyone.

"What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now.
You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank.
Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina.”
Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up."

   - Jessica Valenti, Full Frontal Feminism

Lol, that's fair. It was just a passing thought that got brought to the forefront by my sleep-deprived brain.

I will post a picture of my pets here soon, don't worry.

And maybe here's a poem:

"Amidst the amber trees the fox doth weave,
His fiery coat aglow with autumn's flame.
His footsteps pressing imprints into leaves,
The trace upon this world, a fleeting claim.

The fox now stills to hear the birds' sweet song,
The forest's choir where tunes of peace shall wait.
The branches whisper tales that minds prolong,
And with them, untold wonders we create.

The paths we track may slowly fade away,
That nature will reclaim, and with them, thrive.
Though time erodes, new voices join the fray,
Where dreams are born and evermore survive.

For in the fox's stride and autumn's hue,
We find the world reborn, forever new."

Edit: Fixed something with the poem that's been bugging me since I made it

Also, that's a cute dogo! (and a good poem.) Thank you for brightening everyone's day!

Alright, time to toss in another two cents here after reading through all the new posts. This time they're going to be in bullet points, though, since that's the easiest way my sleep-deprived brain can put them down right now:

1. Will: While you did bring up a great topic of discussion, and this thread has garnered some amazing posts, it seems like you have been slowly deteriorating in terms of your arguments. Please take a break and heed the advice that others have already given you.
2. This has probably already been mentioned somewhere else, but I think that this thread should be pinned. Or at the very least, a few select comments put into a separate thread that then gets pinned.
   1. And damn, a few posts here have made me cry (with joy), and I rarely do that. Good job everyone.
3. As Mousecore pointed out, the main responsibility for keeping kids safe lies with the parents. However, (also pointed out in the same post,) a lot of parents don't care about their children enough to moderate their online experience in the slightest. As such, while we shouldn't become a completely sanitized website, I think that it would probably help to have the newbs limited to only posting in a few select threads, block them from reading all but a few more select threads, and just let them make their own threads to introduce themselves, make a few games, and generally let us get a measure of them.
4. As someone else (whose name I can't remember) pointed out, the culture of this site shouldn't change much, despite its flaws. It has something to it that ensures the bad apples either change or leave, and that's something that very few places manage to have. However, there are also some things that should be changed, or at the very least have some warning signs put around them.

I might come back to add more, but I might not. Either way, I have a mountain of work crying out for attention that I need to deal with, along with the nearby bed calling to me. So:

TL;DR: This thread is amazing, we should probably implement at least a few of the things mentioned in it, and Will needs to take a break.

Oh, and a huge thank you to the entire community for dealing with my crap. I know I can be an insufferable pain in the ass at times, and I am trying to work on being better overall.

Oh, and I might as well put an old-ish one-sentance summery of the site here, as it fits the theme of this thread:

"CYS is a community of wholesome individuals who take pleasure in defending their friends and brutally dismembering their enemies"

Oh, and...

You know what, never mind. This post is long enough as is, and I'll never end it if I stay here any longer.

TL;DR: Thank you.

Oh hey, another honorary mention. Not certain if it's a good or bad one though, lol.

1. Don't worry, I haven't read anything here that was added since I was here yesterday.
   1. The things I was seeing there + the warning are what are keeping me away
   2. Purely only here to add one tidbit:
2. Oh hey look, someone's starting to put in a bootleg/redneck post rating. Nice.

Wow, this was a trip. A lot of other people here have already said what I would say, so I'll just be another person who comes around to pat you on the back for this amazing TED Talk. Thank you for sharing this.

Edit: Someone should gather posts like these and put them into a pinned thread or smth. They're amazing.

And this marks the first post of mine that's been edited by a mod. Yay?

Thank you, oh great Thera, who hath given us this opportunity! May her name ring out in joyous celebration throughout the site!