| - GET BACK HOME |
"So that's my objective, to escape and go back to my original world..." he trailed off, scratching his chin, "...not an idea that I personally can relate to, but I guess for any other person, or even my character, they'd be getting pretty desperate at this point. Alright then!"
"Time to explore and discover a way back home!"
Pressing N again to make his character put away his notebook, he was about to move somewhere else when he brushed his crosshair above some stacked wooden barrels to the side, next to a wall.
| Press F to interact and to grab objects. You can release an object by pressing F again. |
"Wow! There's that, too? Man! This game is sure full of surprises!"
Aiming the crosshair on a barrel, he pressed F on his keyboard and was pleasantly surprised.
"Grabbing mechanics in this game work similarly to Half-Life's... this game seriously can't get any more awesome, can it?."
A curt, discreet sound effect later and the barrel he was aiming at was subsequently levitated, blocking most of his vision in his screen as his character 'grabbed' it. While there was no animation for the act, Subaru couldn't find it in himself to be displeased at that.
Instead, he had a rather mischevious smirk on his face.
He decided to rapidly shake his mouse left and right, his screen a blur as his character waggled the barrel almost uncontrollably to all sides, producing several 'whooshing' wind sound effects as it was mercilessly shaken.
Subaru chortled, almost bursting up with laughter when at one point he shook the object so hard it ended up stuck - glitched to a wall - and fazed in place randomly as it made rather noisy banging sounds.
But he definitely was jump-scared when the barrel loudly exploded in a mess of wooden debris all around. Its parts making distinct noises as they lightly bounced on the ground before stopping.
"...I wasn't expecting that..." he cleared his throat as he chuckled for a few moments at the sheer absurdity of being frightened by a glitched barrel, before taking control of his character.
"This game definitely handles a bit like Half-Life, a really unexpected but not unwelcomed, mechanic! I wonder if they copied Source for their engine? I swear they fooled me silly there!"
Subaru crouched his character as he took a moment to inspect the remains of the barrel.
"Really inter"esting, though. The broken parts aren't just messy, jumbled textures like in many games. And they just stay there. Wow..." he mused, making his character pick up parts of the debris and throwing them around the area.
After a few minutes of throwing wood parts around everywhere like a gorilla throwing his own feces, he was done admiring the Half-Life-like physics of the game, and went back to what mattered.
"Oh, right. I need to work on getting back home. But first..." he turned his character around,
"Well, seeing as breakable boxes or barrels in most games are known to hold either items or weapons, what's to say this game is an exception? Let me check if it dropped something."
Narrowing his eyes, Subaru proceeded to search for anything out of place amidst the plethora of wooden rubbish. For several minutes, his character's torso twisted and rotated like a radar.
"Ah ha! I knew it would drop something!" he smiled as he walked up to a particularly small item with a metallic appearance.
When his character got right on top of the object, a low sound effect reminding him of a zipper played as a monochromatic backpack icon with a plus sign appeared on the left side of his screen.
"Huh? What did I do?"
| Press Q to access your inventory. |
"There it goes again! Yet another game mechanic!" he spoke as he pressed Q on his keyboard.
The background blurred as a transparent, bigger box with several small blocks filling it, swiftly appeared on his screen, indicating his character's body parts completely colored in gray, and his inventory. Atop of the box, several smaller tabs with icons could be seen. A tutorial pop-up immediately showed to the side afterwards.
| TIP: Your inventory shows all the items your character may currently be carrying. You can also craft armor and weapons in the referred section. |
One of the smaller tab's outlines flashed bright orange, indicating the section he would need to go to craft something.
Subaru looked like he forgot to move his mouth, nothing saying anything as he wordlessly clicked on the flashing tab.
| The Crafting Section is used to construct armor, weapons or parts of the player's choice. Some components may require the player to be at a given Level. |
| Crafting requires materials. Materials such as Steel, Wood or Magical Crystals can be found, crafted or harnessed by the player. |
"The best graphics ever, Source engine-styled physics, and now has crafting similar to Skyrim...? This game is just too damn good. What the hell?" Subaru shook his head in disbelief as he explored his newly discovered inventory with its own distinct utilities.
"Oh, so that was a steel piece." he discovered after checking the material section, "Can I craft something with this?"
| YOU HAVE 1 OUT OF 2 PARTS NECCESSARY TO CRAFT THIS WEAPON. |
"...apparently not. Figures." the young man sighed with a deadpan, closing his inventory. "Guess I'll just have to go look for mor-"
"Oi, weirdo!"
Subaru turned his character to the face whoever called him.
"If you know what's best for ya, you're gonna pass up everything you have!" There were three raggedy NPC's. A short one, a skinny one with weird hair, and another fat and strong one.
"What's this now, a trio of burglars? Hm. I guess those three will be our very first instances of enemies, then. Alright!"
"Bring it on, suckers!" he dramatically exclaimed, waiting for a combat based pop-up tutorial tip to appear.
...no pop-up came.
"...eh? Where's the combat mechanic? Don't I have starting gear or anything?"
"What's wrong, huh? Too scared to move? Damned chicken." The skinny one spoke whilst the other two cackled, as if mocking his luck.
"Smart move then, weirdo. If you stay just like that, then we won't have any problems."
"That's right. Just stay right there like the chicken you are!" The smaller one said, laughing as he, along with the other two robbers, slowly approached.
"Well, crap. If I can't fight now, I'll just have to run!"
Just as Subaru prepared to make his character bolt off and escape, a pop-up tip appeared.
| TIP: When engaged in combat lacking a weapon, you can use objects from around the environment. |
"Oh, yeah! Stupid me forgot!" Subaru nearly facepalmed. "Oddly specific moment to pop a tip, though, but whatever."
With an evilish grin, he turned his character towards the barrels he had seen earlier and grabbed one from the stack. The barrel's levitated form obstructing his view as he quickly turned towards his virtual assaulters.
"Oi, what're you doing, huh?!"
| LEFT MOUSE BUTTON to throw an object. |
Subaru smirked. "I'm taking you all down."
He hastily left clicked on his mouse and the barrel was soon launched. Subaru watched in shock as the barrel was sent flying towards the robbers at an impressive speed.
"The FU-"
One of the thieves words were quickly cut short with a crack as the barrel heavily impacted with them. The resulting crash shattered the barrel in several pieces, sending splinters of wood everywhere as the three NPC's were thrown back far with loud, pained cries.
Subaru nearly went slack-jawed at the display of force from his character's throw. But he was even more surprised at how far the NPC's were thrown back.
"Damn, holy crap! Either my character's strong as hell, or that barrel was heavier than it looked if they got launched so far back like that. Jeez, did I kill them?"
His answer came in the form of three thugs getting up, full of bruises and cuts from the barrel.
"They're very pissed off now, from the looks of them."
"That really hurt, you fucking bastard!" the skinny one pulled two knives out from somewhere behind him, "You tryin' to die? Huh?!"
"Yeah! Now we're going to fucking kill you, prick!"
"And don't think it will be painless either!"
"Yeah. Yeah. Catch this one too, wouldn't you?"
Subaru had grabbed another barrel as the NPC's monologued and hauled over them, the barrel soaring through the distance in the blink of an eye.
But Subaru's devilish smile faded. The larger thug swiftly moved to the front and caught the barrel with a loud groan, the force of the barrel making him slide back a few steps.
"Ah crap. They were prepared this time."
"Hah! We don't fall for the same trick twice, dumbass! Ya really think you can take on all three of us, when you're just one lone stupid fuck?"
"Hnng! Catch this, moron!" The big one positioned the barrel over his shoulders and threw it over Subaru's character.
Subaru's reflexes kicked in as he quickly moved his character to the side to avoid the oncoming object, turning his character accordingly to watch as the barrel flied by and broke into pieces right next to where he was.
To his surprise, another material icon popped up on his screen. 'More steel! That means I can craft the weapon now!'
He turned his character to the thugs, "I didn't ever think that I would need it again after so many years. But in this situation... looks like I'll have to do it." he snorted, straightening himself up on his seat, gazing at the screen with a newfound energy.
"Minecraft skills, I choose you! Go!"
He visibly cringed shortly after hearing himself say that.
"Oh, yikes. Ugh. That honestly sounded better in my head..."
"You're gonna be sorry now, punk!" Subaru was brought out of his reverie just as the thugs began to move towards him, he hastily accessed his inventory and clicked the 'Craft' button. A timer began as his character was crafting the weapon in place.
"C'mon. C'mon...!" Subaru urged, the three thugs now mere feets away from him.
On a matter of seconds, nervously looking at the timer, he grinned when it finally reached zero.
From the screen he saw his new weapon: a pipe. It suddenly materialized on one of his character's hands just as the three thugs were upon him.
Just as the knife thug reared his blades back, more pop-up tutorials appeared.
| LEFT MOUSE BUTTON to attack. |
| Hold RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON to throw. |
Wasting no time, Subaru instantly left clicked and his character swung.
A loud wham was heard as his character whacked the skinny thug with the knives across the head with his pipe. His attack had rung true.
With a pained scream, the armed thug recoiled and fell backwards from the hit as blood flew out of his concussed head, dropping one of his knives in the proccess.
The other two thugs went from confident to bewildered as they saw the supposedly strange, helpless man suddenly, but ruthlessly, fighting back against them.
Known to give no rest-time to his enemies in gaming, Subaru moved his character quickly, closing the distance between him and the fat thug in no time.
Taking advantage of the big thug's perplexed state, he striked once more. Swinging the pipe in rapid succession, he scored several hits against his opponent's chest and gut. The fat bandit couldn't bring himself to react fast enough at the sudden onslaught and collapsed in agony.
"Die, you dog!"
Subaru's screen suddenly flashed red as his health dropped to eighty-five percent.
"Crap, the other one!"
Spinning his character around to face his final enemy, the midget, Subaru could see he had taken the knife dropped earlier.
"Oh, he stabbed me? Sneaky little goblin. Take this, then!"
Just as the midget robber lunged in all his animosity, Subaru jumped and crouched simultaneously, his character effectively going overhead his opponent.
"Wha?!-"
With a blow to the back of the head, the small bandit was silenced, losing his consciouness as he fell to the cobbled ground with a thump.
"Hahaha! Oh yeah! Take that you sacks of EXP! Now you'll remember to never mess with Natsuki Subaru, ever again!" Subaru cheered as he bunnyhopped his character around in the alleyway, over the collapsed bodies of his enemies.
"That was awesome! But still, a pipe for starting gear? It might be a long way to get the Excalibur, then. Man... better than just throwing barrels around, I guess. I wonder how much EXP I got?"
"You! Stop right there!"
"Jeez. Another one?" Subaru mumbled to himself as he turned his character around, pipe in hand. "Don't tell me they've also got their boss lady or something - oh..."
Instead of the boss lady, he found himself staring at only a lady.