I focused on the familiar light. The cursor skipped along an invisible line, spitting out letters behind it:

WELCOME TO ARKADIA

A brief pause and then:

CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER

Funny. I didn’t remember deciding to play anything. Arkadia sounded like my kind of thing but the name didn’t seem familiar. Must have been from my wishlist. I never look at my wishlist without finding half a dozen things that I don’t remember putting on there.

I reached out to press a key to make the screen move on. As soon as I thought that the screen flickered and there were several wire frame bodies rotating slowly. Each one was labelled.

The default body was human. Sorry, not interested. We have human at home for free.

Elf, half elf, dwarf, gnome. A bit vanilla but worth considering. You can have a lot of fun playing a gnome type if the smaller body size comes with a speed boost.

Orc and half orc. Much more like it. It’s always nice to have a playable option with a bit more beef. I like a nice tankie build when I’m in the right mood for it.

There was a section of anthropomorphic animal forms. Much more interesting. I’m not a Furry but I do play one on the Internet sometimes. The wire frames were labelled variously Beast-Kin, Bird-Kin, Scale-Kin and Gill-Kin. I was sorely tempted.

I scrolled down to see if there was anything else worth playing. The next section was all various kinds of Fae. Some of them were greyed out. There wasn’t any indication of why, or how they could be unlocked. The lesser Fae type was tempting because it had wings but I knew from experience that those wings probably wouldn’t be much use in the early game. They’d probably be nerfed so that you’d be tied to the same options as the other starters. I’d have to unlock true flight farther down the road. There might not even be true flight. Some games would just use it for flavour or as an accessibility option for people who couldn’t time jumps. I didn’t fancy the idea of flapping along at eye height for the human sized characters while looking up at things I couldn’t fly to.

Next there were a couple more greyed out wire frames labelled as Vampire and Werewolf. Beyond them there were a lot of blacked out options. Just intriguing silhouettes with no name plate. I wondered what you had to do to unlock them. Were they DLC? Maybe gated behind some kind of achievement?

I scrolled back up to the animal people. The Gill-Kin was tempting because that would probably be amphibious so I’d be able to explore underwater locations. On the other hand it might be completely nerfed on land and I didn’t know how much underwater content there would be. If the game was survival heavy I might be tying myself to a build that required more drinking water or even need breathing apparatus on the surface.

I selected the Beast-Kin, hoping that I’d get more information about racial bonuses.

The screen flickered and a vaguely mammalian humanoid form, wearing a chest wrap and simple underwear, appeared in the centre. There were a bunch of sliders on one side and a bunch of different animal heads on the other. Messing around with the sliders allowed me to select height, muscle mass, stored fat. Above the figure’s head I could see its stats changing to match the physical changes. Height down, stealth up. Muscle mass up, strength up but speed down. Stored fat down, constitution down but speed up.

That was nice. I like to see innovation in character generation and tying stats to the physical build of the character was a nice touch.

The chest wrap seemed to indicate that this character was female. Not sure if that was down to a female default or a randomiser. I left the gender where it was because I had an idea based on the animal heads. One of them was a hyena. I picked that and a pop-up notification appeared that said HYENA TYPE HAS PERKS - CAST IRON STOMACH AND BONE CRUSHING BITE. Excellent.

I gave the beast-kin bear type ears rather than the hyena type because they looked cuter. They didn’t seem to affect anything. I tweaked the face to look as non-threatening as possible but I kept the hyena teeth.

Another pop up appeared. OK? I tapped it and the next level of options appeared.

I picked something called DIGITIGRADE CANID legs. Buying boots would be a problem but I now had two attacks listed. BITE ATTACK and CLAWED KICK. I picked clawed hands rather than basic hands or paws. That took the manual dexterity score down a tiny bit but added a third attack - CLAW STRIKE.

I could tweak the build in more detail. Bust size down a little, booty and thighs up a lot. The speed stat rose slightly.

Again with the OK? Popup.

Options for colouring and hair. Now there was a slider for body hair and a stat for thermal protection. I opted for pretty long body hair. Not all the way to the top because you never know where you’re going to spawn and a game that has a thermal protection stat probably also has a hidden heat-stroke countdown. The slightly shaggy hair would protect against sunburn and the cold. It might also unlock all kinds of cool decorations. Maybe I would be able to braid all of the things. If I moved the slider all the way it would start to tax the graphics processing. It would probably either look awful or make the fans on my computer’s graphics chip set sound like a jet engine taking off.

There was an option for longer scalp hair so I took it and gave my hyena a mane. The long flowing hair disguised the shape of her head and made it harder to tell that she was a hyena and not say a dog or a bear. Maybe there would be barber shops and I’d be able to unlock more hair style options.

Below the hair and fur options were the colouring choices. I went with a subdued, slightly reddish brown and a pattern similar to the spotted hyena. I tried something brighter but the stealth stat went down. I indulged my love of the dramatic by picking piercing, icy-blue eyes. My own eyes are blueish grey and kind of underwhelming.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The pop-up appeared again. I tapped OK.

The Hyena Beast-Kin moved to the left of the screen. The rest of the space filled up with a bunch of drop-down menus. At the top of the screen there were a bunch of new stats. Intelligence was greyed out. There were a bunch of resistances. Poison resistance was maxed. That’s hyenas for you. Both hypothermia and hyperthermia resistances were pretty high. That’s the benefit of picking an African animal but giving it longer hair.

I looked over the stats and resistances. Speed and stealth were good but dexterity could be higher if I wanted to go the sneaky route. Both constitution and base damage resistance looked good but not nearly enough for a tank and the base strength stat was too low.

There was a stat for magic resistance so there must be magic in this game. Hardly surprising for something called Arkadia. I couldn't adjust the intelligence stat but it seemed quite high so maybe it was worth going the magic user route.

At the end were three empty bars labelled WOUNDS, EXHAUSTION and FATIGUE. The bars were different lengths. EXHAUSTION was the longest but WOUNDS was almost as long. FATIGUE was considerably shorter. Would they fill up as I completed the character sheet or did this system work in reverse to most? Did Wounds get added as damage was inflicted? Did exhaustion build up like lactic acid in the muscles?

The first drop-down menu was Character Type. I opened it and scrolled through the options. A few caught my attention. HEALER jumped out because of the implications. SCHOLAR struck me as a particularly challenging build, one for the masochists. WARRIOR sounded a bit too vanilla for my tastes. SURVIVOR was the one that tempted me the most. It sounded durable and I really hate dying.

Picking SURVIVOR caused a huge jump in most of the resistances and added to the length of the three empty bars, WOUNDS increased the most. It seemed like my instinct was right and it was a good base for a durable, or even tank build.

The next drop-down was marked career path. The available paths were clearly all unlocked by the type I’d just picked. If I wanted to see other paths I’d have to go back and pick a different type.

I noticed FORAGER and FORESTER and RANGER but the one that jumped out was SCAVENGER. That was the first one that I found that didn’t seem exclusively rural. I didn’t want to lock myself off from any sweet urban content by limiting my access to urban skills.

I selected SCAVENGER and a lot of the other drop-down menus instantly greyed out. It looked like a SCAVENGER didn’t get any starting gear or money. On the other hand the resistances went up even more and the three empty bars increased in length again. This time it was FATIGUE that went up a lot more than the others. Dexterity and Speed also went up, more than compensating for the Dex I’d lost by choosing claws.

At the bottom of the sheet was something else that caught my eye. It said, STARTING SKILLS - BASE 3 +3 FOR SURVIVOR +6 FOR SCAVENGER. That +6 seemed high to me maybe to compensate for the lack of starting gear. I’d probably have to pick crafting skills so I could make my own gear but you rarely lose out in the long term by being able to craft gear. At the very least you can make what you want to use and then sell whatever you loot. At best you can make gear to sell, even to other players. If I was really lucky there would be an auction house.

The other thing about this type of build is that you don’t need to rely on other players. The presence of a HEALER type suggested that it was a multiplayer game. I don’t object to multiplayer, it's just that people are dicks and I don’t like relying on them. If you can make your own gear and resist most debuffs then you’re not so dependent on support characters.

Below the skills notification there was a small golden tree. I reached for it and it expanded and grew in complexity to become a vast skill tree, most of it greyed out.

There were three bright points of light. I focused on one of the lights and the screen zoomed in on it. HUNTER TIER 1. FOR STALKING AND TAKING DOWN PREY. COMPULSORY STARTING SKILL. UNLOCKED BY HYENA BEAST KIN. If I added enough levels to the tier 1 skill it would unlock Tier 2 but I could see that there were other skills unlocked by HUNTER. TRACKER looked good to me. TRACK PREY BY SIGHT AND SCENT. There was also SNEAK ATTACK: CHANCE AT INSTANT KILL ATTACKS, CRITICAL HIT IF ATTACKING FROM COVER. Also tempting.

I zoomed out (not actually sure how I did that since I didn’t hear a scroll wheel) and sought out the other lit up skills. MAKE BASIC GEAR. MAKE BASIC EQUIPMENT USING RAW MATERIALS AND RE-PURPOSED SCRAP. COMPULSORY STARTING SKILL. UNLOCKED BY TYPE: SURVIVOR. Basic gear didn’t have a tier progression. Instead it led to MAKE IMPROVED GEAR, MAKE ADVANCED GEAR, MAKE EPIC GEAR TIER 1, and, via a side branch to MAKE EXOTIC GEAR and MAKE TECHNICAL GEAR.

The survivor type seemed to unlock a really broad range of skills. One I mentally tagged for later was CAMPFIRE COOKING. It unlocked the ability to cook basic foods over an open fire and it chained to the main cooking skill tree. Reading the descriptions of the various cooking skills showed that as I levelled up I’d be able to prepare food that increased recovery and healing rates. The cooking tree also had links to the Alchemy tree and I couldn’t see any other easy way of getting into potion making.

The third illuminated skill was IMPROVISED WEAPONRY TIER 1. USE ANYTHING AS A WEAPON. DAMAGE BONUS TO SELF CRAFTED AND SELF UPGRADED WEAPONS. COMPULSORY STARTING SKILL. UNLOCKED BY CAREER: SCAVENGER That sounded good. If you’re going to have to bash someone over the head with a rock it’s better if it’s treated as weapon damage. I went back and looked at MAKE BASIC GEAR in more detail. As I’d hoped, one of the things I could make was basic weapons. Even better.

The IMPROVISED WEAPONRY skill had its own tier chain but it also linked to more conventional weapon skills allowing for specialisation. The weapon specialisations included all the usual fantasy weapon types but also guns. I had another look at the MAKE GEAR chain and guns were listed under advanced gear. Not even exotic. I’d need ten levels of MAKE GEAR to unlock the ability to make guns, then five levels of BASIC MELEE WEAPONS and a single level of RANGED WEAPONS to unlock GUNPOWDER WEAPONS. Might be worth it. I’d have to do some research on how easy it was to find or make ammunition before I decided if I wanted to commit to that.

It did make me feel like it was a good idea to put some extra levels into MAKE BASIC GEAR and IMPROVISED WEAPONRY if I could do that as a starting character. There’s probably no way to lose by being able to craft gear and use anything as a weapon.

I spread my skills around trying to find a good balance of supporting my compulsory starter skills and unlocking interesting skill chains with an eye to future synergies.

With all the skills picked all that remained was to name the character. Once again I was in the dark, staring at a blinking cursor, mind empty. I tried to think of some exotic name, something that would fit the slightly steampunky character concept that I had. It seemed like a long time, that I sat there, staring at that blinking cursor, unable to think of anything except…

In the end I shrugged, mentally at least, and typed (typed? What on?) Petra, and hit return.

Instantly I wanted to hit the back button. There were so many other options that I could have picked. Maybe I should have played an orc.

“Welcome to Arkadia!” said a soft voice from what felt like right behind my right ear.

“What?” I said. “No! I’m not ready. I want to change my character.”

It was only then that I realised that at no point had I seen a “BACK” button.