The Fashionary

With our first major bugs down, I created a patch that got sent throughout the whole game. So long as nothing was blocking that patch, the T-posing issue and the dialogue tags should have been completely fixed.

“Mr. Roberts, Rose! You guys did great!” Tensei flew in and gave me a hug. “I knew I picked the right people for the job.”

-Yeah! We did great!-

Rose used the hug emote and made me accept the angel fairy’s embrace. It felt warm, like clinging to a heated pillow. I honestly never thought I'd ever be this close to her, but it was a comforting experience, like holding my own child.

“Alright, then if this is taken care of, should we move on to the next bug?” I asked.

“We sure can,” Tensei said as she pulled away. “I have a list of some bugs that I saw out there, but it's not all of them.” She unrolled a comically large scroll that was as long as I was tall.

“So we’ll have to discover some on our own, is what I'm hearing?” I asked.

“Very likely, yes.”

The studio kept a list of our own bugs that playtesters found. Could I access those from the studio’s cloud storage?

Before Tensei despawned the access point, I checked to see if I could find the running list. There was a document from about two months ago by me, but it looked like it hadn’t been updated with any of the recent issues.

“Oh, crap…” I sighed. “They were all sent to me over email. I haven't saved those to my computer yet.”

“Darn it…” Tensei gently kicked the access point in frustration. “Maybe you’re able to log into your email from this?”

I gave it a shot, but the access point didn't have a browser to search the web with. Tensei tried her best, but she couldn't load anything up either.

-Ray, Maybe I can look it up from home?-

“Oh, yeah!” I smiled into Rose’s hud. Tensei let out a cute little gasp of excitement too. “Rose, mind doing that for me?”

-You can count on me! o7 -

The only issue here was that I hadn’t compiled and sorted all the issues together yet, so she was going to have to make a list of whatever was sent to me. There was also the possibility that some playtesters mentioned the same problems, so she was going to have to read through it all. That would be busy work we'd have to deal with, but I had all the faith that she could handle it.

There was a sudden loud gasp right behind me. Rose turned me around and we saw a mother and child looking on in horror.

“Mommy mommy!” A child pointed my way. “Look at that man! He's in-dee-cent!”

“Stay away from him!” The mother pulled her child away and scurried off. “How dare you go outside in your underwear? I'm calling the guards!”

I really did look unflattering in just this loincloth, especially since I wasn’t in the best of shape, so I couldn't blame them for that one. That being said, it made me feel like a slug with zero dignity.

“Tensei, any ideas where I can get some clothes around here?”

Most of the towns had some shops where the players could buy clothing with in-game currency, but I didn’t know where any of those were and I was flat broke.

“I've got it!” Tensei snapped her fingers. “Lady Rose, can you please pause the game for a second?”

-She called me a lady… Tee hee :)-

The pause menu opened up on Rose’s hud. It was a mess of mostly Japanese characters and a very bare bones UI.

“Great!” Tensei flew up to the hud screen and tilted her head for a second in confusion. “Hmm… Why is this in Japanese? That’s not right…” She poked the screen once and the Japanese transformed into English. “Much better!”

“Amazing that you can do that…” I commented. Tensei must have had more powers over this world than I thought if she could just translate things like that. “Why did you ask to look at the pause menu?”

“Well, you need clothes and I know a way to get you some very special ones.”

She poked one of the buttons in the menu that read ‘Fashionary.’ Then the world around me went completely dark with Tensei and I standing in a void. Suddenly an orchestra of sounds began building until I was standing on a platform among a colorful nebulous space of stars.

“Welcome to the Fashionary world!” Tensei cheered as very fantasy techno music entered my ears.

“The… Fashionary world?”

Never heard of this before. The background looked really well made and had a lot of sparkling depth to it. The platform I was on was really decorative too. But those things weren’t why Tensei had brought us here…

-Oh… My… God… We're in Vegas baby!-

Rose spun me around to reveal something that looked like a giant golden slot machine. Beautiful looking statues of women decorated the whole thing like siren gargoyles of fashion.

Images of clothing were inside the slot reel windows, each with a very fantastic design that looked both expensive and unique.

“Tensei, what is this?” I asked.

“This is the Fashionary machine!” she said as she flew up to it and patted its top. “Well, actually it doesn't have a proper name yet, but that's what I call it. This is where players are going to get super cool new clothes for their characters. Everything that comes out is so pretty and has lots of cool effects!”

She latched her whole body onto the leaver and put all her tiny weight on it until she finally got the thing to go down.

A series of slot machine sounds followed, as well as the music going quiet and being replaced by a drumroll.

Anticipation built as the slot reels spun rapidly.

*KAH CHUNK!*

The first reel stopped on something that looked like a skimpy sports bra.

*KAH CHUNK!*

The next reel stopped on a pair of school boy shorts.

*KAH CHUNK!*

And the last reel stopped on a pair of pirate boots.

Once all three of the reels had finished spinning, little bubbles of items were dispensed out the bottom, each corresponding to one of the things shown on the screen. There were fireworks, fanfare, and mysterious cheers coming from every corner of this realm.

The theatrics here were incredible. I felt like a movie star walking on stage to the grand entrance of a rewards ceremony.

Once all the item bubbles were laid out, Tensei popped them all and out came those clothes.

“Here!” She flew over with the school boy shorts and handed them to me. “From here you can also change your appearance to your heart's content too. It’s a really awesome place, isn’t it?”

I noticed the slot machine started up again and continued to dispense a variety of new items out. Rose must have been doing something there, because it just kept going.

- $$$ LET’S GO GAMBLING $$$ -

It definitely had that gambling feel to it, considering the show the machine put on, but apparently we didn’t need any money to get this thing going. There certainly was a coin slot though, which had to have been for the in-game currency, right?

There had to have been thousands of different customization parts in there. The more Tensei and Rose happily pulled on that lever, the more I was convinced there was no end to the clothing being produced by the machine. It really was impressive, although a lot of the clothing didn’t have a texture on it, so it just looked like a purple and black checkerboard.

Why didn’t anyone tell me about this feature? If it was such a big deal that it had its own tab in the menu and such amazing details, then I felt like it would have been talked about somewhere in the studio. Unless, the devs overseas were the ones working on this part and didn't tell us.

That would explain why everything was in Japanese. This build must have come from their servers.

-Oh Ray… I’m going to have a lot of fun with you here >:)-

I couldn’t help but notice that evil face she put at the end there. What was she about to do to me?

Suddenly a big mouse cursor floated through the air. Tensei followed it around like a cat trying to catch a laser pointer.

The mouse cursor stopped on my crotch and my loincloth highlighted a white color.

I heard a click sound and then the loincloth was ripped away, leaving me in nothing but my polka dot underwear.

“Hey!?” I growled as the mouse cursor tried to do the same with my underwear, but that wasn’t coming off. “Don’t you dare!”

-Sorry! I had to test, you know? (_≖ ͜ʖ≖)_-

The mouse returned a few moments later with one of the 2d outfits on the ground, then placed it over me. A pink tutu suddenly appeared on me, accompanied by a tight shirt that was three sizes too small on me.

“Seriously?” I gave her hud screen a disappointed look. “Rose, please don’t treat me like a glorified Ken doll.”

“Mr. Roberts!” Tensei spiraled around me a few times. “You look so pretty!”

“No I do not!” I shouted. “You really think this is pretty?” I gestured to my belly peeking out of the tight pink shirt of the outfit.

Tensei held a mirror up to my face and revealed something horrifying…

“Why am I a woman?!”

My face didn’t just change though, because I had boobs and long hair too.

Oh no… I looked just like mom…

There were a bunch of sliders and options being manipulated by Rose’s mouse curser. Along with those options came changes to my appearance. My nose grew triple its size. My eyes bubbled up like an anime girl in a shojo magazine. My lips stretched out ridiculously long. Then I got tall, big hands, little feet and elf ears… I looked ridiculous.

-Ray sure looks pretty now, yeah Tensei? Look at those smoochable fishlips (˘ε˘˶ ) -

There were two types of gamers. Those who wanted to be beautiful as a Greek god, and those who wanted to look like a troll after getting hit by a truck. There was no in-between, and Rose was the latter.

“This is all great and fun, Rose. I sure like playing virtual plastic surgery simulator… But can you please put me back to normal?”

-Fine…- She hit a reset button and suddenly I ended up back in my normal male body. -I’ll take this seriously now. Let your lovely wife dress you up all handsome and cool, my darling   ( ๑‾̀◡‾́)-