Stuck In The Pixel Dungeons

“Wait, Rose!” I shouted before she initiated futile combat with the guards. If we started fighting them, there was no talking them down until they either killed us or cooled off over the course of a real-life day. And that had consequences of its own. Plus, they had a numbers and level advantage over us. It was much easier to surrender and take the punishment head on. “We’ll cooperate… But please, tell us exactly what crimes we’ve committed."

“We have heard of your miserable deeds at …-SPAWN TOWN-...” He said in a sudden robotic tone. “We will not let you harm our fair city as well!”

This was a mess that didn’t make sense. So first, somehow, they considered something we did at spawn town to be a criminal act. Other than streaking in a loincloth, I couldn’t think of something we did that was so egregious that they’d put out a warrant.

Since we didn’t put up a fight, they cuffed us in chains and started tugging us around. They marched us beyond the low-res gate and through a city of pixelated blocks, vaguely stacked together to form what once might have been a great place to live. The Glitched here were in the same voxel state as the cube countrymen out at the farms. It might have just been their pixelated textures, but none of them looked very happy.

Rose was venting all kinds of nasty things in the chat about the guards and how we did nothing wrong. Tensei was trying her best to chat them up and get any sort of info out of them, but they ignored the angel fairy like she wasn't even there and kept marching with us in toe.

About halfway through the blocky city, a massive demonic fortress came into sight. Its spires had large floating bits that were glowing with sharp and jagged spikes all around it. Gargoyles weren’t just decorations along its rims, they were sentry keeping watch, twisting to eye us as we passed.

Like the high-resolution guards, this fortress happened to be incredibly high quality and filled with detail. The moment we stepped up to its gates, my sight began to freeze and skip around.

-The framerate just tanked from 120 to 9 FPS! ┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘-

I really noticed the difference. It was so hard on my eyes that it felt like I was walking through a slideshow presentation. The high quality fortress definitely wasn’t optimized.

-Are we seriously just going to let them take us like this? Ray, I can’t stand them just arresting you for no reason!-

“There’s a reason, whether we like it or not…” I replied. Even if it wasn’t fair, or this was some other glitch, everything in life happened as a response to something else. Nothing came from nothing. That's how I knew all glitches in every game could be fixed. They weren't magic, just broken code. “Excuse me,” I spoke up to the guard captain. “But can you tell me exactly what we did to end up in this situation?”

“We’re you deaf before? You committed a crime,” the guard aggressively replied. “That’s usually how people end up in your shoes.”

-A wise guy, isn’t he?-

My money was on him not knowing the details either. I tried getting a more specific answer out of him, but he just kept replying the exact same way until eventually furrowing his brow with concern, like he was detecting something must have been wrong himself.

“Regardless of your injustice, Lord Troja has decreed you hostile and dangerous. So you must face punishment.”

-Ask him who that is!-

“I was about too,” I said. “Who’s Lord Troja?”

“He is the one who has taken over after the betrayal of Mayor Pioppel,” replied the guard.

“Betrayal?” Tensei uttered in shock. “What do you mean?”

The guard refused to elaborate anymore and took us directly to the dungeons. Down here things were pixelated again. The walls were a depthless stone texture that almost looked like a poster of an archaic game. The metal bars were nothing more than two flat textures intersecting with each other to give the illusion of sturdiness.

It also smelled really bad, like a sewer. Tensei and I both reacted to the smell, but fortunately the others didn't have to deal with that part.

They shoved Zorro, Tensei and myself inside a cell and left one person to keep watch over us.

-I thought this city was supposed to be nice. This is creepy as heck and I hate it!-

-The_Zorro : Señor, I knew something was wrong. This wasn’t how the quest was supposed to start at all-

I only had a vague idea of a few quests, since I had to work with those people to design mechanics around some of them. Plus, I kept an eye over the shoulders of inhouse play testers when they adventured through working builds.

There was a guy who chose a darker storyline as opposed to the majority. He was one of the few who decided to become evil and try and conquer the board, and he started right from the beginning. All the feedback he gave was pretty valuable, since there wasn’t a lot on that.

He did mention occasional traps being set by certain cities to try and capture him and put him in jail for some period of time. Personally, I almost hated that mechanic because it punished the player a little too much by making them wait out real life hours for a sentencing, but it seemed something we did sprung a similar reaction in the guards here.

“It’s like we're on the villain path…” I mumbled loud enough for everyone to hear. “But how?”

That might have explained why Zorro didn’t experience this particular quest. He took the hero path, which I assumed most players would. None of the straight-shooting players would have gotten a warrant out for their arrest, and that included us.

But no matter how much I thought about it, there was nothing illegal we did at Spawn Town to cause this kind of quest to trigger. My brain just couldn’t figure out how it was possible. Unless...

“Zorro, I’m not blaming you… But I need to know if you're hiding something.”

With how nice he’d been up to this point, I didn’t want to believe he might have been the reason we were locked up, nor did I really believe it… But I needed him to be honest.

-The_Zorro : On my honor, I have not committed a crime in this world. I’m also being paid a little to playtest the game, so I wouldn’t lie about something like that.-

Yeah, he got a pretty nice paycheck from this, especially since he seemed to have some experience. I trusted him.

The only one left here that could have done something was Tensei. I doubted she would have, but I needed to set things straight.

“Tensei, you were gone for a while…” I said. “Did something happen?”

She shook her head.

“No! I swear! I was just gathering berries for potions and getting info on Seigefell from NPC’s.”

I believed her too. Tensei didn’t have any reason to lie, since she was stuck with us in this cell.

“Besides, the game doesn’t arrest everyone in a party for one person's crime,” Tensei clarified.

-Maybe this is a glitch then?-

It had to be, but it was awfully convenient that it happened to trigger when we came up to Seigefell.

“Tensei, didn’t you say the mayor here was supposed to be Pioppel? What happened to him?”

This city wasn’t far from spawn town. Info like Pioppel betraying it would have spread fast, much like our supposed arrest warrant. This new management probably happened rather recently.

“I did,” she nodded. “I’ve never even heard of a Lord Troja before. I have no idea where he came from, or what happened to Mayor Pioppel…”

I wanted to see this guy for sure, since he wasn’t supposed to be running the show around here. Somehow he must have usurped the mayor and taken the reins.

-You know what I’m wondering? Why are we sitting in a pixel dungeon while those guards are really super detailed. They almost look lifelike!-

That was another thing I couldn’t wrap my head around. Those guards looked darn near realistic. I didn’t even have that many pixels!

“Oi! Keep it down in there, ya’ clods!” A guard struck the low-res prison bars with the hilt of his sword. "Yer' all annoying!"

We weren’t going to get to the bottom of this if we didn’t have a way out of this dungeon. I had a feeling this probably had to do with something The Virus was messing with, but that suspicion didn’t do me any good behind bars…