You find yourself at the start of a long, featureless corridor with a flight of stairs at the end. Rushing towards you is a wave of identical RATS. \n\nDo you <<choice "Rats Death" "dodge and weave, killing them one by one">> or <<choice "Zombies Fight" "run through them hoping to make it to the end alive?">>
What do you want to melt him with?\n\n<<if $hasthermalpod eq "yes">>[[Throw thermal pod.|Thermal Pod Throw]]\n\n<<else>><<timedgoto "Wizard Death" 5s>><<endif>>
You crouch down, only making it easier for the concealed spikes to suddenly puncture you right up the bumhole. They retract again, and you roll off the [[edge of the platform.|Death Canyon]]
You are dead. You find yourself in purgatory, which is exactly the same as Grim Fandango, so go play that game.\n\n[[I don't have Grim Fandango!|Hell]]
Oops! Passageway blocked. Try again.\n[[Ok then, go right.|False Exit]]
False exit. There is a trap door two steps in front of you.\n[[Ok... secret door.|Secret Door]]
Clambering up a cliff face, you find a glass flask of potion, corked with an eyeball. The label has a symbol on it of two parallel arrows pointing in opposite directions. Do you drink the potion?\n\n<<choice "Backwards Potion" "Yes">>\n<<choice "Rats Fight" "No">>
After half an hour of bloody battle, you slay the rats. You approach the end of the corridor when a final rat, which had spent the battle unnoticed and confusedly running on the spot in a corner, springs loose and [[rips your ankles to shreds.|Death PAX]]
The wench glares at this breach of saloon etiquette but nevertheless directs you with a flick of her hair to a rickety door on your left. [[You sheepishly head through.|Saloon Corridor]]
<<silently>>\n<<set $hasloincloth = "no">>\n<<set $haseyeball = "no">> \n<<set $hasmonkeywrench = "no">>\n<<set $hasthermalpod = "no">>\n<<set $haswarningwands = "no">> \n<<endsilently>>You awaken in the dark, lying on the wet rock floor in nothing but your plain undergarments. You have no memory of who or where you are. It must be amnesia!\n\nYou stand up. As your eyes adjust to the gloom, you can see that you are in a small cave with a distinctive green lantern hanging from the ceiling, and two exits. One is a <<choice "ID Tunnel" "dark uphill tunnel.">> The other is a <<choice "Character Room" "dark downhill tunnel.">>
You make it past the rats and run up the stairs which, thankfully, they seem unable to climb. \n\nYou find yourself at the start of a long, featureless corridor. A pistol and ten large boxes of ammo sit incongruously on the floor. You pick them up. Suddenly you notice a wave of identical ZOMBIES heading straight for you! \n\nDo you <<choice "Zombies Death" "back up slowly, taking careful headshots">> or <<choice "Nazis Fight" "rush at them guns blazing?">>
You piss into the bucket.\n\nYour overall weight reduced by 300 grams, you head back to [[the exit door|Saloon Exit]].
As you kick empty flasks out of the way on your walk over to the saloon facilities, you stub your toe on a small wooden crate. The wood is rotten and you pull the lid away with little effort. Inside are a thermal pod and a quiver of warning wands. You only have strength to carry one or the other.\n\n<<choice "Take Pod" "Take the thermal pod.">>\n<<choice "Take Wands" "Take the wands.">>\n<<choice "Take Neither Pod Nor Wands" "Take neither.">>
Wrong again. You have used all of your warning wands. One more wrong choice will unleash a white demon. Hurry Magnum or you will forfeit the game.\n<<choice "Dungeon Master" "Oh, what? This is all an extended, convoluted Magnum pi reference?!">>\n<<if $hasthermalpod eq "yes">><<choice "Magnum Thermal Pod" "Throw thermal pod.">><<endif>>
You go to the Bing homepage and your laptop explodes, shooting shards of glass and metal into your astonished face. "Ah, because Bing is shit," you realise in your dying moments.\n\nTHE END
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THE DUNGEON MASTER SAYS YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS\n\nThe phone rings. It's Mac, asking you to help him out with something. The distraction is just enough to lose you the game. The computer screen flashes up the message "TOO LATE YOU LOSE" and cuts to a picture of a gravestone on a grassy plain, with the epitaph "R.I.P. MAGNUM".\n\nIn frustration, you type in "drop dead!!!!!!!!!!"\n\n"SYSTEM CRASH", the monitor screams at you, before surrendering to a fireworks display of garish colours and garbled code as the computer dies. Your loveable, moustachioed face drops. "Well, Thomas Sullivan Magnum, private investigator," you think to yourself, "Higgins is going to be REALLY upset with you this time."\n\nEvents unfurl in what, if Robin Masters were to write a tv series about your escapades, would probably make up a fifth season episode called "Little Games".\n\nYou go on to have many more adventures, until you are shot by gangsters and, depending on whether one subscribes to obvious and overused fan theories, either die and go on to some sort of afterlife, or recover and become a loving father and Navy Commander.\n\nCONGRATULATIONS! YOU WIN, PROBABLY!
As spikes shoot out of the floor, you leap forward and [[grab onto a rope!|QTE5]]
You swing across, time your release of the rope perfectly and land safely at the base of the stairwell. With no way back, [[you climb the stairs.|Saloon]]
You plummet down into the canyon and see a floor of jagged rocks [[hurtling towards you.|Death Game Over]]
You run to the edge. A huge curved horizontal blade swings towards your face.\n\n<<choice "Death QTE1" "Jump!">>\n<<choice "QTE2" "Crouch!">>
The platform starts to crumble underneath you. You wait three seconds and then [[jump onto a small passing platform just in time!|QTE3]]
You land safely, but notice the floor of the platform is covered in small holes.\n\n<<choice "Death QTE3""Crouch!">>\n<<choice "QTE4" "Jump!">>\n<<choice "Death Canyon" "Move left!">>\n<<choice "Death Canyon" "Move right!">>
You die. You wake up screaming and covered in sweat. It was all a dream! You're actually a successful Interactive Fiction writer and today you're showing off your new game at PAX!\n\nUnfortunately, your brilliantly designed and yet overlong dream led you to sleep in and miss the latest Penny Arcade comic, which portrays all IF writers as paedophiles. Arriving at the expo, you are immediately lynched to death by a group of people wearing DEATH TO IF WRITERS J/K LOL t-shirts.\n\nTHE END
You are standing in the cavern of an evil wizard. All around you are the carcasses of slain ice dwarfs. The wizard raises his ice scepter at you.\n\n[[Melt wizard.|Melt Wizard]]
<<silently>>\n<<set $haseyeball = "yes">>\n<<endsilently>>Pulling out and pocketing the eyeball, you knock back the potion. [[.noos ffo raew lliw tceffe gnitatirri eht gnipoh|Rats Fight]] ,sdrawno elbbow uoY !desrever neeb evah slortnoc ylidob ruoY .sdrawkcab sreggats ydob ruoy tub ,ot yrt uoy tsael ta rO .drawrof reggats dna ,egnarts leef ot trats uoY
.passage .title { display: none }
You are dead. Everything fades to black. Lights flicker on and you find yourself in a white room. You hear a voice emanating from all around: "Stop messing around in the holodeck, Jonny. Time to get back to BEING A SPACE MARINE IN THE FUTURE." \n\nTHE END
You get to work on the blog post and after two hours post a work of comedy genius to the internet. Within a day, it gets millions of views and is hailed as the best thing ever written. Fame and glory are yours.\n\nTwo weeks later, at the opening ceremony of your new theme park, you are shot by an irate Sega Saturn fan who misunderstood the satirical point behind your blog post.\n\nTHE END
You come to a sudden halt as you realise you're on a tiny ledge above a vast, deep canyon. A series of platforms and timed death-traps float in mid-air before you, leading to a stairwell on the other side of the pit. A door slams down behind you. The only way out now is to traverse the platforms.\nThe first platform floats within reach.\n\n[[Jump!|QTE1]]
"Oh, nothing," you say. "Just some research. Now what say we go prepare for the meeting?" You lead Susan into the bedroom and spend a long night of wild, passionate love-making.\nThe next day, the presentation is a great success. You soon climb through the ranks to become Mr MacMillan's right-hand man, and eventually inherit the company. You and your loving wife Susan expand the company into a global corporation. Using your vast resources and influence, [[you steer the human race in a brighter direction.|Big Fan Fic Curse]]
Unfortunately, these are FAST ZOMBIES and [[your traditional tactics fail.|Death Game Over]]
The thermal pod does nothing - this is the wrong convoluted pop culture reference to use that in. You should have gone through the ice door, you'd be riffing on the classic Tom Hanks movie "Big" by now.\n[[Oh fine, get on with it, then.|Dungeon Master]]
The Often-Ending Story
Laptop set aside and sheets kicked off the bed, you commence the act of self-love. In this moment, you are truly happy.\n\nCONGRATULATIONS! YOU WIN!
You carefully navigate your way down the creaky wooden steps into a damp, rotting old cellar. The room is piled high with empty potion flasks and in the centre sits a [[rusty old bucket, half full of piss.|Saloon Pod Wands]]
You throw the thermal pod. The wizard melts. You have won the game. The computer game that, only two months ago, was your greatest challenge in life. But that was when you were little Josh Baskin, 12 years old and taking out the trash for your mom. Then the dark magicks of the Zoltar machine made you Big, and now you're in an adult body, working at the MacMillan Toy Company in 1980s New York as a toy tester and, now, designer. The simple pleasure of beating this game hits you with an urgent yearning to return to your care-free little life, away from business proposals, office politics and romantic commitments.\nAfter a trip to your home town to spend a day watching young children wistfully, you return to New York and sadly eat dinner. Susan, your romantic partner, notices your distress and asks, "Josh, what's wrong? What is it?"\n\n<<choice "Big Canon Meeting" "Explain that you're a 13-year-old made big by a demonic arcade machine.">>\n<<choice "Big Fan Fic" "Become a man and put away childish things.">>
The wench notices you and pouts her already over-full lips furiously. "You want a good look?" she screams, before sitting on your face and smothering you with her curvy yet pert and rock-solid buttocks. [[As you suffocate|Death Purgatory]], you reflect on how tediously sexualised everything about this strange species is.
The door creaks loudly as you gingerly push it open. In front of you is a warped wooden corridor. There is <<choice "Saloon Exit" "a door on your right with 'Exit' carved into the wood">>, and <<choice "Saloon Cellar" "a door at the end similarly marked 'Toilet'">>.
You spin a tale full of dark rooms and masked men. Hours later, Agent Jarvis runs out of questions, and tells you he'll speak to you soon. Over the next six months you will have many similar meetings telling vague stories of irrelevant details, before the Bureau declares the case unsolved and moves on. Meanwhile, you try to get on with your life, but after having life as a 33-year-old, you feel out of place amongst your contemporaries. You separate yourself, waiting to get back to that age so you can live again. But once you get there, both you and the economy have lost the optimistic energy of that time. Susan married Mr MacMillan years ago and does not return your calls. You get a job in the toy section of a department store, and live an unremarkable and bitter life until dying at the age of 93.\n\nTHE END
<<silently>>\n<<set $haswarningwands = "yes">>\n<<endsilently>>You take the wands.\n\nYou now only have the options of <<choice "Piss In Bucket" "pissing in the bucket">>, or heading back up and taking <<choice "Saloon Exit" "the exit door">> to avoid any further passive aggression from the bar wench.
Susan takes your confession to be some kind of metaphor for your panic at either tomorrow's business presentation or committing to a relationship with her. She goes to bed.\nThe next day, you and Susan present your revolutionary idea to the board - an interactive story where the reader decides what to do next! You're nervous, but Susan covers your slip-ups and Mr MacMillan seems to like the idea. But then Paul pipes up, "I don't get it!"\n<<choice "Big Canon Zoltar" "Aaagh, it's all too much! Go find Zoltar!">>\n<<choice "Big Paul Ending" "Take that bully down, playground style!>>
Gradually you come to. You find yourself in a small white room. There is a large mirror embedded in one of the walls. You groggily get to your feet and walk over to it. You barely recognise yourself. Apart from the shock of seeing your 13 year old face once again, your head has been shaved and implanted with dozens of electrodes and other devices. A speaker in the top corner of the room crackles to life. "Make a wish," it orders.\n\nYou spend the next seventy years in this room, making wishes that do not come true, for men you never meet.\n\nTHE END
The tunnel leads down to a wondrous cave full of clothes, theatrical make-up and blank identification papers. You dress yourself, choose your facial hair and fill in your papers with your new name, species and messianic prophecy. Another tunnel leads out of the cave and [[you follow it.|QTE]]
Well done! You have collected 200 gems! \n\n[[You dive into the pool|Rats Fight]].
You follow the steep, narrow tunnel upwards. As it levels out, you come across your clothes and wallet and instantly remember your identity. You dress and [[continue along the tunnel.|Graboid Fight]]
<<silently>>\n<<set $hasthermalpod = "yes">>\n<<endsilently>>You take the pod.\n\nYou now only have the options of <<choice "Piss In Bucket" "pissing in the bucket">>, or heading back up and taking <<choice "Saloon Exit" "the exit door">> to avoid any further passive aggression from the bar wench.
You leap to the rock, and scramble to the top. Unfortunately the rock is only a foot high. [[The graboid's snake-like tongue hooks your leg and pulls...|Death Purgatory]]
You find yourself in hell for not owning Grim Fandango. Hell is exactly the same as The Dig.\n\nTHE END
At the top of the stairs are a pair of swinging doors lead to a small saloon. The rickety wooden floor is stained with grog and blood. A wench in an uncomfortable-looking and revealing latex catsuit tends bar. You would assume her to be human if it weren't for her figure: two gigantic breasts each bigger than her own head and yet somehow supported by her stick-thin waist. She turns her child-like face to you, coquetteishly awaiting your order.\n\nBehind her are rows of glass flasks containing the same purple potion, corked with eyeballs and labelled with a symbol of two parallel arrows pointing in opposite directions. \n\n<<choice "Wench Motorboat" "Stuff a gold coin down her top and tell her to shake it.">>\n<<choice "Wench Suffocate" "Step behind the bar and crouch down, positioning yourself at the very best angle at which to admire her buttocks.">>\n<<choice "Saloon Toilet" "Decline and ask where the toilets are.">>\n<<choice "Backwards Potion" "Order a flagon of potion and leave through the back.">>
<<silently>>\n<<set $hasmonkeywrench = "yes">>\n<<endsilently>> You grab the monkey-wrench and roll over just in time to plunge it deep into the looming graboid's heart. Struggling to your knee, you rip the wrench free in an arc of scarlet blood. The graboid crashes to the sand next to you and dies with a mournful whine. You start to feel morally conflicted about killing this majestic beast.\n\nDo you <<choice "Cliff Face" "continue on with tears rolling down your cheeks">>, or <<choice "Gem Cave" "stride on emotionally unaffected?">>
You get a taxi to Sea Point Park, and find Zoltar! You wish to be a kid again, and then Susan arrives and realises that you were telling the truth. You both travel back to your family home and say your goodbyes. You enter your house and call for your ma. "Josh?" she shouts. "Josh!" You hug for what seems like forever, but when you finally lift your tear-stained face from her shoulder, you see a stranger standing in your living room, watching you. "Hi Josh," he says. "I'm FBI Agent Bill Jarvis. I've been leading the investigation into your disappearance. What can you tell us about where you've been?"\n<<choice "Big Jarvis Truth" "Tell the truth.">>\n<<choice "Big Canon Ending" "Lie.">>
Oh hey, the Google Doodle is an interactive game today! You have a quick go before doing your search. It's a surprisingly deep game and you die of starvation five days later without managing to get 100% achievements.\n\nTHE END
You are in a large cavern. Nestled in crevices throughout the moss-covered rock walls are hundreds of gems, many-coloured and twinkling in the dark. There is a small rock-pool in the centre of the floor, with a dim light emanating from the bottom.\n\nDo you <<choice "Rats Fight" "dive into the pool?">> Or do you <<choice "Gem Pick Up" "pick up the gems?">>
You stumble through into an expansive open courtyard, scattered with human bones. A storm roils angrily above. In the centre, a titanic wizard turns to see you enter. His eyes glow red, as does the large medallion marked 'EOGB' around his neck. "How did you survive my elaborate plans, princeling?!" the wizard bellows at you, a pyrocurse gathering in his hands. "No matter! The kingdom is now mine, and you will die!" The door slams shut behind you, and you [[prepare for battle.|Wizard Fight Three]]\n\n
Over billions of years, the universe expands, and then over billions more it retracts until finally it contains only you. Your mind has long since fizzled out, but the atoms of your body feel something that could be called relief as they are finally blinked out of existence.\n\nTHE END
The wizard's dastardly and overly-complicated curse creates an entire parallel universe and flings you into a fully historied life there as an famous electronic raconteur. You find yourself sitting in bed, working with something you somehow know to be called a "laptop".\n\n<<choice "Log Google" "Google 'how to return to parallel universe after wizard pyrocurse'.">>\n<<choice "Log Bing" "Bing 'how to return to parallel universe after wizard pyrocurse'."">>\n<<choice "Log Blog" "Write a comedy blog post about gay dogs in Sega Saturn games.">>\n<<choice "Log Wank" "Have a wank.">>
You tell your mother and Agent Jarvis that for the past two months you have been transformed into a 33-year-old and living successfully in New York. They look at you with pity and confusion, Agent Jarvis thoughtfully chewing on the arm of his spectacles. But then you mention getting your wish from a fortune teller machine. At these words, Agent Jarvis' eyes bulge and his jaw tenses. He grabs you roughly by the shoulders and urgently demands, "What was the name of the machine, Josh?"\n"Agent Jarvis, what..?" your mother stammers, as you gasp, "Zoltar! It was Zoltar!" Jarvis releases you and solemnly steps back, reaching inside his jacket. He pulls out a gun and aims it at you. Your mother screams. He pulls the trigger, and you're hit in the chest. you look down to see a feathered dart sticking out of you. You recognise it from Saturday morning action shows as a tranquiliser dart. Your vision becomes hazy as you drop to your knees. The last things you hear are your mother's screams and Agent Jarvis speaking into something like a radio. "Operation Djinn, new subject confirmed" he croaks, as you [[black out.|Big Lab Rat Ending]]
The blade slices you open and your guts tumble out. Grasping to hold them in, you stagger to the edge of the platform and [[topple over.|Death Canyon]]
<<silently>>\n<<set $hasloincloth = "yes">>\n<<endsilently>>It turns out these are FAST ZOMBIES, so your mindless attack prevails. \n\nYour brow pours with sweat as you stand among the piles of fallen dead. You mop your face down with a saggy soiled loincloth from one of the bodies. Suddenly you notice a wave of identical NAZI SOLDIERS rushing towards you. You pocket the loincloth and prepare to fight, but you only have one bullet left in your pistol.\n\nDo you <<choice "Wizard Fight" "stand and fight">>, or <<choice "Death Space Marine" "'pull a Hitler'?">>
You are in a passageway.\n[[Turn left six paces.|Passageway Blocked]]
Over the years, though, you retain your mid-thirties body while everyone around you ages and crumbles. It gradually becomes clear that Zoltar granted your wish by cursing you to ageless immortality. By the time you realise and try to hunt down the Zoltar machine, it is too late, for your spurned childhood friend Billy vengefully tracked it down and destroyed it years ago.\nYou become a recluse, an unseen leader of the human race, guiding the species from the bunk-bed in your penthouse suite, via fax, then email, then hologram. \nEight hundred years later, you feel a guilty sense of relief when the utopia of Earth is unexpectedly destroyed by a bolt of space lightning. The lone survivor, [[you float slowly through the lifeless universe for millennia.|Big Fan Fic End]]
You are dead. You hover over your lifeless body. The words "GAME OVER" appear. It turns out that this was all a virtual reality game that you had been playing for so long you started to belive it was real! Shock at this mind-blowing twist soon gives way to disappointment that it retrospectively renders your entire adventure pointless and mundane.\n\nTHE END
You shoulder the exit door open and emerge into a large, paved courtyard. the door swings shut behind you, just as you notice it has no outside handle. With no choice, you head to the other end of the courtyard. In each corner stands a small tree, its purple and yellow flowers bathing in a thin shaft of light emerging from the high rock ceiling.\n\nYou come to two giant, arched doors. The left door is wooden and pale with frost, stalactites hanging from the lunette. The right door is made of sturdy-looking iron. <<if $haswarningwands eq "yes">>The left door is engraved with the legend "WARNING THERE IS AN ICE WIZARD BEHIND THIS DOOR". The right door is engraved with the legend, "WARNING THERE IS A RED DRAGON BEHIND THIS DOOR". Two of your warning wands disappear in a puff of smoke.<<endif>>\n\n<<choice "Ice Cavern" "Enter left door.">>\n<<choice "Red Dragon" "Enter right door.">>
<<if $haseyeball eq "yes" and $hasmonkeywrench eq "yes" and $hasloincloth eq "yes">>Using the monkey wrench and loincloth, you propel the eyeball at the wizard. It strikes his glowing medallion, and he explodes into a pile of meat lumps. The grey clouds clear to reveal blue skies. Suddenly, a hole opens up beneath your feet. You slide down a tunnel for what seems like hours. Eventually, you crash onto a wet rock floor, tumble forward out of your clothes and slide down another tunnel. You crack your head against the floor as you land in a cave. Looking up blearily, you recognise the distinctive green lantern from the start of your quest. You feel the memories leaking from your mind and realise that you will be doomed to repeat this journey forever. The last thought to slip from your head is that your fate provides an insightful metaphor for the drudgery of human existence.\n\n"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve" \n- Erich Fromm\n\n<<else>>Unfortunately, you don't seem to have the right items to defeat him with, so you get zapped by his magic fireball. <<display 'Blogger Curse'>><<endif>>
"Get THIS!" you yell, diving over the table and punching Paul in his smarmy weasel face. While Susan and Mr MacMillan try to pull you off, security is called and arrive just as you finish giving Paul an atomic wedgie.\nYou are committed to an insane asylum and are killed three years later when you ask the wrong inmate to "make me Big".\n\nTHE END
Your hesitancy has cost you dearly. The wizard, sensing your \napprehension, unleashes a fatal blow from the ice scepter. With luck, you will thaw in several million years.\n\nTHE END
The wench angrily arches her eyebrows even higher than they were before, and grabs your head. "I'll shake it, alright!" she screams, before clubbing you around the head repeatedly with her ridiculous mammaries. "Motor-boated to death. How dare she demean me like this?" you think to yourself as [[you black out from the pain.|Death PAX]]
Ben Ward
Literally thinking outside the box, you now only have the options of <<choice "Piss In Bucket" "pissing in the bucket">>, or heading back up and taking <<choice "Saloon Exit" "the exit door">> to avoid any further passive aggression from the bar wench.
You tumble into a wide sand-pit, encircled by rocks. A monkey-wrench gleams, half-buried in the sand. You feel tremors beneath your feet and suddenly a giant graboid erupts to the surface! As the huge worm-like creature screeches in fury, you make a split-second decision between <<choice "Graboid Win" "diving for the monkey-wrench">> or <<choice "Graboid Death" "leaping for the nearest rock.">>
You line up as many Nazis as you can and shoot off your final bullet, hoping to get a few at the same time like in that movie you saw. A row of five fall dead at the same time and in a remarkably similar manner. You throw your pistol at the nearest Nazi. It strikes him on the head and bounces off to hit the one next to him. They both fall down dead. The rest of the Nazis take you to be a master of the occult and immediately commit suicide, the devilish cowards that they are.\n\nTriumphant, you reach a towering ornate door inscribed with the name ST. EVIL EVENSTONE. With great effort, [[you push the door open.|Wizard Fight Two]]