Dead Game

Originally written from July 6, 2025 to July 7, 2025

The thing is that I was always a person. Always so fragile, as much as I was that fragile. I knew well the consequences of a reasonable effort, and that thing that was bounced off that reality and came ever so closely to glory. That perfect state.

I woke up, staring at the lights, and it was quiet. I heard loud sounds outside, and I wondered if I could cope with this noise. I went to my PC and turned it on, opening it to steam to see the same bastards going about their business in their profiles and playing all these stupid games. Maybe, I was judgemental. I was probably. I drank a mug with cold soy milk mixed with cocoa and waited until it settled in my stomach as I stood up and pelted down the hallway before turning right, downstairs. I cocked my ear to the walls and waited until my apartment neigbor closed the door before I headed outside and looked left and right into a street at a time when the cleaners were still sweeping with dust pans.

I went down the road, turned right, and then turned left, leaving the subdivision. The road past the gate ran until it joined the national road, and I followed it, soon turning my head at the junction. To my left was a corner cafe and a large empty grocery store with expensive goods but no one buying. There was another cafe at the other end which was very good, at least compared to what felt like the 90% sugar filler “mocha’ of the corner one. I crossed the pedestrian and waited for the jeepney, riding it to the bus terminal and heading to the city where my workplace was located. After a busy day at work and after returning to the doorstone, I pressed my cheeks against the windows to see if anyone was inside. I unlocked it with my key and padded upstairs, flumping down on my rotating office chair before hitching it into place and tapping the power button. As the computer silently came to life unlike the roaring PCs back in the day, I went to the multifunctional kitchen-dinning room to grab a black coffee from the fridge, placing it on my desk as I returned. With the computer on, I typed my password on the keyboard and pressed the “Enter” on my keyboard. I clicked my browser Firesocks on my taskbar and immediately made it restore the last session since the PC updated while I was gone.

I tapped and searched “new RPG 2025”, and there, I scrolled down to a few magazine-like websites and then presed my shortcut “Ctrl-W” to close the tab before creating a new tab and searching again to get a fresh start, but this time with a new query: “old RPGs”

I went to one of the options, but then I jumped to page 25. I saw one random blog post about this old game “Light Ages”, so I went and searched and found its official website. I downloaded it immediately, as I did with many other games I tried. I had money in hand, but this one was free.

After booting it up and creating an account, I got in the game.

I hesitated for a moment when I saw the old graphics, so I played some psychedelic rock to get me in the mood.

My toes pressed harder against the marble-mimicking porcelain tiles as I leaned in, studying the interface. “What is this?” I said out loud.

I clicked the mouse several times, looking for a meaningful response from the interface. It showed me many things, but nothing that made much sense. So I went to the official website for any resources and found some.

After reading for a bit, I went back. It was isometric view, and I was in a large wooden house with five rooms. Many items and furniture festooned the walls. It felt like a lived-in starting room, but that wasn’t usual. What was unusual was that there was no door I could see. So I moved my avatar around and then found it on the southmost corner. “Aha!”

After exiting and moving to the loading screen, I then appeared in the street. It was a wide gravelly one with a lamp post in what was supposedly a medieval world. I saw eight NPCs, but no players.

I kept walking, and I wondered when I was going to get a quest. I felt that I was being made to walk for no reason. I stopped in front of a stall and tried to get my avatar to interact with it, but to no avail.

I stopped in front of a large town hall–like building, and then I tried to my character look through the windows, but no response. I tried to get to the door, but it was locked, so I left anyway. I went over to a bench and waited, getting off my real-life chair and scanning the street from the corner of the black-out curtains. I sat on a couch in front of a large TV and turned it on, going to Netflix. I resumed watching a classic anime, one of the big three, since I haven’t watched it beyond season one growing up. I glanced at the screen every once in a while, but after three hours, nothing.

After I headed to bed, I woke up the next morning and saw that the chat log had a few messages.

“Dracos24: Hello!”

It was a repetition of messages, and it had little other meaning besides that. The user who said them wasn’t there, and I wondered if that person was even talking to him, since the chat was global.

I moved my character, curious why they did not have any anti-AFK mechanisms, or perhaps the time limit was very high given the lack of players? I had no clue.

I stepped in front of the stall again, leaving it there as I went to grab some coffee and prepare breakfast. I took a shower and wore a semi-formal attire, a habit of mine, stopping by the cafe on the other end instead of the first corner one. I bought the 105-peso cold Americano and set my laptop bag on a high table with an accompanying lofty chair beside the socket. It was the same spot every time. I took out my books as well and began reading and taking notes using my laptop.

After 8 hours of this, I returned home and saw that no messages had appeared on my PC since I was gone.

I slumped onto the couch and then quickly stood up, hating to resume watching the show. I alt-tabbed off the game and went to six different social media sites, writing down my thoughts as notes in a single document in an online auto-saving text editor as I went along.

I switched to another tab, where I searched free books from the 19th century, reading up on how people wrote about sheep back in the day. Then I went over to a Japanese art album from the 1970s. I went next to a resource for drawing and opened my free drawing software, using my drawing tablet to sketch a dog based on a reference.

I yawned, smiling as I saved my work, before heading to a 3D game engine and creating a small platform game with obstacles. After adding a few difficult first levels, I played a few similar games made using the engine and looked for ways to complicate my game. Once I got a few ideas like a roulettte, I implemented them one by one, taking five hours, which was very quick since I was experienced not only as a developer but with integrating free stuff from the community.

After this, I lay down in bed and brought my phone in front of my face, tapping the web comic app icon and entering a world of visual stories. I went over to my history, and the last thing I read was a story about a male protagonist with a NEET-based system in a post-apocalypse setting. And that was three days ago, since I had been working non-stop the last three days. I read two chapters and stopped himself from reading beyond that so that I did not feel the discomfort of seeing fewer than 5 available chapters given the serialized nature of the platform. Afterwards, I went to a web novel website through my browser, not a dedicated app, and then I resumed reading this story about a fake over-powered character who is secretly guiding others through a tower. It was so funny, but just like with web comics, I did not like reading it all too fast and relied on a routine to do so, reading only 5 chapters today.

After this, I checked the Light Ages game again, and I was still at the bench. I started moving my character, hoping for something to happen. I went down many roads and turns, and then, I stumbled upon what looked like a woodmill next to an open canal. I liked the aesthetic and vibe, so I sat at the edge of the canal, making my character look over to the other side, which I couldn’t access.

I then saw a player appear there. It was not Dracos24. It had the username “Sciencemaster111”.

“Hello!” I wrote, mimicking Dracos.

“Sciencemaster111: good morn”

“It’s evening for me, but good morning as well!”

“want to join party?”

I stopped. Party? What party? What kind of parties are there? How do they even have parties? Is this a small tight-knit community where people genuinely interact with each other? I feel that there has to be people just afk-ing around here. But let’s say yes and see what kind of investment I’m in for.

“Sure! I’ll join you!” I wrote back.

I followed him.

Giant statues the size of skycrapers stood in front of me. Instead of a high-rise city was a low-rise one with these giant statues peppered all around.

“What is this?” My hands typed frantically, their eyes seeming to glare straight at my character.

“cece made them”

“Really?”

“indeed”

“OK, who’s that?”

“my friend. wanna be friends with her”

“Really?”

“she is offline rn but she is online tomorrow”

For a moment, there was only silence, and my eyes began to drift, first to Sciencemaster and then into the scenery.

Sciencemaster wore what looked like a linen shirt, and we just passed by a thicket of underwood and cane. We soon entered a unpaved area of the city and walked over hard yellow clay that was intermixed with small pebbles, coming later before a large circular mud hut.

A land-carriage looked abandoned across the road, and to our right were broken glass windows and a cluster of trees that spread widely atop the house, with distant mountains peeking above it. To our left rose gentle hills covered with wood, turning off from the city square.

For about two kilometers, the road led us over such hilly, but also broken ground.

As soon as we neared a large gate leading inside a giant house, Sciencemaster dropped a white cotton cap, and he told me to wear it.

After I slapped the cap on my head, he told me to wait here.

I waited for a while, staring at my character. For a moment, I’d lost myself. Why did I do that? I haven’t done that in a while. I have always remained a man of this house, not a thing of a game, but I guess that’s just how games work when they’re truly interesting.