⸮ollɘH

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Two pathways appear, glowing in the air, written in that same metamorphous calligraphy of glowing veins.

MODEL and STATS.

Appearance can be… tough. Comfort in your own skin is hard enough, and frankly, if it means finding out that all this was leading to some default protagonist that just feels wrong, I’d rather wait. In no time flat, my hand is over the STATS option.

The arm of an avatar draws attention as I do. The game seems to try its hardest to completely negate the shape of the controller, putting it into something more realistic. My hand is there, but remade in a pale, worm-like exterior, slimy and slick. I love it. Points for immersion for sure, but there’s something just funny at the idea that I’m more comfortable with the pallid, slightly off limb more than the thought of making “myself” in the game’s character creator. Nothing to explore there, no sirree.

Slowly, the glowing polyp rises into the air, glowing above almost like a bulb or a far-off satellite, letting down a bit of red color to the void all around. In its place, directly in front of me, a series of words begins to form, four of them, shaped into categories, each one with a small circle right beneath it, empty and dark.

* ADAPTATION

* CANALISATION

* EVOLUTION

* SYNCHRONICITY

…huh. I know… at least two of those words. Maybe three, out of context. That points to interesting possibilities (and, frankly, pushes me further towards the theory this is some lone programmer’s opus more than an official product). Synchronicity especially points to a lot of potential mechanics, and I wonder wonders what it might mean, but “CANALISATION” isn’t a word I'm familiar with. I go to hover over the word, and then smile wide as the veins of the word react, pulling back and unfolding like a flower, forming into more words.

ADAPTATION unfolds into a bright, deep red, the veins branching out jagged from the original word and dripping thick, heavy fluids, as if oozing a dozen different oils and unidentifiable liquids.

The Entity’s ability to change in relation to outside factors, such as materials consumed or environmental factors. Generates new responses, abilities, and resistances.

The Entity? Oh ho ho. How positively flattering. My smile gets just a little wider as I pull over to the next stat, letting the forking vein-tree of ADAPTATION retract back into itself.

CANALISATION is made up of paler lines, and as my hand hovers over it, it grows slowly, steadily. It expands into a flat pane of off-white material, one cohesive whole- smaller in scale than ADAPTATION was, but far more structurally stable.

The likelihood of a mutation or change in spite of changes to the Entity or its environment. Reduces rate of random transformations and helps changes not immediately useful stay with the Entity longer.

Now that’s fucking something. Sort of a balance to the adaptation mechanic? I wonder, if I pump all my points into adaptation, do I turn into a hyper-reactive clump of mess? Sounds fun to play as, but I can definitely see how it might be annoying long-term, especially if I can lose my mutations. CANALISATION seems like a sort of stabilizer, a way to control what happens to me. A weird but ultimately promising stat, but I’m a bit annoyed at the presence of something so obviously designed to manage another system, rather than something entirely new.

Too early to judge. I let the stable blocks of flesh drift away, turning to the next stat in line.

EVOLUTION has a fascinating little animation, where it hatches open and makes another version of the word appear as I hover over it, slightly different than the last one. The process repeats, three more times in about two seconds, until the newest version of the fleshy word is a descriptor like the other stats.

The likelihood that traits gained by one avatar will carry over into the next as the Entity communes.

Short and sweet, but again, indicative of a lot. Is this a roguelike? If I’m the Entity, then the avatars… would be the characters? Hmm. Again, mixed feelings about this one. Without points in a stat, I lose all my progress if I die? Seems a bit clunky, and I didn’t even know this thing was a roguelike in the first place. Or maybe it’s like keeping my xp between save points? Well that would also suck. Hmm.

No judging. Too early. Focus up.

One more stat, and this one I’m particularly curious about.

SYNCHRONICITY doesn’t act like the others. There’s nothing as distinctly organic about it, even. The words are still red and meaty, but rather than react like a living thing, as my hand comes closer to it, it sort of… fizzes. Like static, feeding into my haptic feedback like the sensation of a limb gone numb. It flickers and pulses, greying out parts of the black void until words appear, an almost searing red color and edges of static making up the text.

The Entity's communion with higher ideals, improving its understanding and ability to use organic technology and the mechanics of reformation.

…well fuck, consider me re-hyped.

Organic technology? Mechanics of reformation? If the other stats feel like weird technical terms and balancing issues in the making, this one is just tempting. I can practically feel saliva start to gather at the thought of a crafting system, or hell, just a big minigun made out of arms or something. Oh the possibilities…

I can only imagine that this one is going to be a joy to play with, especially if there are crafting options. The potential the description promises is nearly enough to offset the concern over the other stats right then and there.

Alright. Especially if this is a roguelike, an idea is forming. It’s hard to make a true glass cannon with these mechanics, but an equivalent comes up pretty obviously, staring me right in the face: full adaptation dump. The more I have, the more I can experience, the more I can do, and I can always load a save or just die and respawn to build a new character, probably. This way, I can get as much as I can out of a single run before coming back to a more balanced build, rapid-fire experiencing things until I get a feel for what I actually want out of the game.

Hovering above the options, I try to select the circles under the words rather than the categories themselves.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

No numbers, no arrows to click up and down, but as my avatar gets close to ADAPTATION’s empty bubble, it begins to glow. Looking closely, I see a bit of liquid begin to fill the circle, bright red slowly filling the circle up higher, higher, close to the top-

I blink.

My avatar’s hand is getting paler. The sliminess is drying up, rapidly making the limb look outright unhealthy. I tilt my hand back, and some of the red drains back out of the ADAPTATION circle, and almost instantly, the arm plumps back up.

Fuck, this shit is abstract.

Color me fascinated, though.

Tilting forward, I fill the ADAPTATION circle up to about halfway before switching to SYNCHRONICITY, filling it up to half as well. At this point, my avatar’s hand is damn near mummified, drained to the point of being a dull, lifeless grey. Still, I push it towards the EVOLUTION bubble, and a trickle of red fills that too.

And then… the arm falls limp.

I quirk an eyebrow, waiting for something to change, but… it’s just there. Limp. I wave my controller over the options, and they respond just like they did with my avatar arm, so I’m not locked out of anything. Is it just a really artistic way to show I’m out of stat points?

Damn creative, if a little confusing. Honestly? I think that makes me like it more.

This is great. I’m getting invested.

Now to see if the rest of character creation is going to break that interest.

With the stats selected, I look around, trying to find a way to get to the “Model” part of character creation again. There’s no button for it, but… hmm.

I point up at the bulb above.

Immediately the world begins to shift. There’s a distinct difference in the lighting, especially as the polyp grows closer; it’s gotten larger, heavier, juicier, like its straining against the thin skin around it. Most of all, it has a lot more movement in it. It’s like the inside of it has turned from a translucent liquid into a thick goop, full of fibrous materials and dense with a much richer glow. Does it respond to the character creator? Did someone code distinct animations for every possible combination on the stats sheet? Damn does that bode well, but it sure seems like a lot of effort spent on the character creator.

A click of the controller and the screen shifts further, like I’m moving in a great distance. The polyp, in all its fleshy glory, grows until it’s almost the size of a person, bright and filling the screen. The veins that made the earlier words spread out and begin to flow around the space, the stat-names swimming like tendrils in the dark until they cradle the orb and the shadows inside it. Distinctly creepy and deeply fun to watch.

A dripping sound echoes in the void all around, and a few drops of that bright crimson liquid falls to the ground in front of me, mingling with the tar. Slowly, up out of the ooze, a figure comes to its feet, the crimson still turning into a pale, off-white skin that cloaks it as it stands, humanoid and distinctly inhuman for it. Its looks match the limbs that the game gave my avatar, still hanging limp to one side- thin, almost skeletal, and so white it looks like slimy porcelain. It’s hunched, malshapen, uneven, with lumpy bits like tumors all over it. There’s a face, a thin, lipless mouth framed over two round and lidless eyes.

I raise a hand, reaching out- and it mirrors me exactly.

Above and to its right, another menu forms, a series of options popping up. Height, Curvature, Muscle Definition, Weight- more than a dozen sections for different descriptors, with additional sliders and details for facial features. It goes deeper, though, and I have to blink and make a little noise, a bit dizzy at the possibilities presented. Markings, piercings, talons, coloration, even sliders for the amount of fur and feathers. Interestingly, there are only limited options for scales, but they’re there too, and the number of varying features offered for teeth, eyes, and hair patterning are… well. Extensive.

A sense of mixed joy and dread rises into my gut, like eating too much of a good thing, as I stare at the massive array of options. The memory of Cyberpunk 2088 and the hours I spent in the character customization screen elicits both fond nostalgia and worry at just how much fun this is going to be, and just how much time I’m going to spend on it.

I roll my neck. Crack my knuckles. Do a little shimmy in my furry socks to shake out the willies.

Time to get to work.

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3pm is long gone.

To look at a clock? In the midst of enjoying an all-new gaming experience? Sacrilege. Apostasy. But… admittedly, I don’t really need to look at a clock to know that I’ve been here for hours.

And as a consequence… I have achieved perfection.

Well. Not really. But it’s pretty good!

I sigh, grabbing and popping open a bright pink energy drink without even needing to pop the headset off.

“I need a life.”

Then I gargle the carbonated mix of carbs, caffeine and raw sugar and look back upon my glorious creation.

Time to live vicariously through something else’s life.

The white homunculus is long gone. While the options don’t offer as much variety as I hoped (no making my first character 9 feet tall), they do have a pretty wide range, and I’ve done my damndest to make use of it.

The body remains humanoid, that much remains the default, but I don’t begrudge my creation its minor flaws. Standing at a good 6ft, the creature in front of me has two long, slender arms, terminating in multi-jointed fingers with short and curled talons at each end. The creature is fairly fit, but the options were limited in the end- some muscle is visible, but it mostly just makes the creature look lean, ready to strike. It seems to default to a crouch, but its legs are long as well, giving it the advantage of reach, and there are small patches of feathers that grow in patterns of red and purple along its joints and parts of its body. Pure white skin has been swapped for something darker, though it’s still mostly greyish, somewhere between “corpse-like” and “camouflaged to look like a rock”, and both eyes now glow with bright purple pupils in their center, the rest of the sclera kept all-black. In a sort of idle animation, the avatar makes a growling noise and clicks its teeth together, exposing a mouth full of predatory canines.

Nothing crazy, really, but a very fun combo nonetheless, and there are so many options that whoever I make next will almost certainly look completely different.

Or very similar. I am, if nothing else, a woman of taste.

I scroll down to the end of the list of options, looking for a button to confirm the selections- and find something I hadn’t seen yet.

There’s a grayed-out section of the settings menu, with an unmarked checkbox right above it. Hovering over the section, a series of wriggling veins swim from out of the void around me and form a new sentence.

18+ material ahead. Check box to confirm legal age and increase to full immersion.

A brand new flashback hits me dead in the memory cluster, going right back to Cyberpunk 2088.

These motherfuckers got themselves some gibblies. Some goolies. Some gaba-gaggling grinders.

They got a dick slider. I can feel it.

And all that’s keeping me from it is one unchecked box.

Oh yeah.

I click the option the instant I’m done processing, watching it light up and fill with blood in a funky little animation. The box fades back in with the rest of the menu- and then, to my surprise, that same blood streams out of the box to color in the game’s options, lighting up and letting me see the final pieces on selection.

Sure enough, there it is. The Reproduction menu.

I almost giggle as I open it, ready to look upon the abominable horrors that an indie-developed set of VR genitals will most certainly be. I’m prepared to behold a mess of rearranged pixels and awkwardly formed 3D modeling software-

And actually recoil a bit in surprise.

If there are genitals in this menu, they’re certainly not the kind that comes up in a health class. And, for once, not because of how entirely messed up American schools are.

There is certainly a wide selection, and very little gender binary to speak of, in large part due to having to actively stop and puzzle out what in the fuck (literally) some of the options are meant to do. Either nature has way more forms of genitalia than I’ve ever heard of, or whoever coded and modeled these should be working at Bad Wyvern. Or putting them out of business.

Even if the game ends right here, frankly? Two hundos well spent, if only to glimpse such artistic fervor.

Another twenty five minutes of browsing and confused imagining later and I’ve made my selection, tempted as I am to spend another thirty just examining all the imagination on display.

Almost immediately, the menu fades away, dissolving back into the amniotic void surrounding me. Slowly, the character creation menu and the model fade into nonexistence, and the camera angle comes in closer, closer, closer, the polyp getting larger and larger…

Again, the haptic feedback goes wild to emulate the experience of falling into a glowing sack of goo.

For a while, there is silence.

I move my arms, and this time, the haptics activate, responding differently. There’s a slight delay in the game, a pushback from the haptics telling me there’s some kind of resistance.

Gradually, I find where the resistance is strongest, pushing against it-

With a wet, incredibly viscous ‘pop’, I emerge out of a strange womb into someplace beautiful.