Rising Shards

It was quickly becoming apparent that this game was unfair on a scale I wasn’t prepared for. After earning a few more red X’s on the way to school (by saying hello to a friend, going to class, and sitting by our friend in class), we were close to losing already, as we could only have so many red X’s, which were tracked on the side of the screen. Our next scenario had Byval trying to focus in class, but a Cani girl in front of him kept swatting him with her tail.

“Zates, pay close attention to this one.” Kalei said.

“Oh shut up, I don’t wag my tail in people’s faces like that!” I said. “Nobody does that!”

Our options were to grab the tail, politely ask the girl to stop, or tattle on the girl to the teacher.

“I don’t even want to suggest anything,” Oka said. “I’ve been wrong every time here.”

“This one’s gotta be to ask politely.” Kalei said.

“On the other hand, grabbing the tail here might Zeta B make that hilarious noise our Zeta did.” Iris said.

“I’m just gonna say thank you for making her Zeta B and keeping me as the main Zeta.” I said.

Suddenly the screen changed despite none of us making a selection. Or at least I thought none of us did.

“Iris!” Oka said.

“What, I just clicked something!” Iris said. “The timer was about to run out!”

Just as Byval aggressively grabbed the girl’s tail, causing her to shriek, Red X’s covered the screen, and a really low budget visual of an ’explosion’ broke up the screen, with text saying ”LOSE” popping up. The explosion looked more like a blocky slideshow transition than anything.

“Did everyone just die?” Oka asked.

“It said at the beginning that if we failed to show good morals or whatever the planet gets hit by a meteor that the alien guy sent.” Michi said.

“Where did it say that?” I asked.

As we started over, Michi pointed out a flag in the top left corner. Clicking on that revealed some game lore.

“Welcome to MAKE-GOOD-DECISIONS SCHOOL. You (YOU) are one of the C.A.N.I. K.I.D.S., a creation of Professor Tar Land. You must complete the game and make good decisions to the morals that all Cani should abide by. If you fail, Professor Tar Land will destroy the planet with his meteor spaceship, killing all life.”

“That’s really bleak.” I said.

“I guess it’s a meteor and a spaceship.” Michi said.

“So do we have to win at this or can we just ride it out until class ends?” Kalei asked.

“Why would you say the last bit out loud?” Maia asked. “If there was any chance we could do that, we shouldn’t voice it with a teacher right by…” Ms. Letoh walked by, smiling a bit.

“You do have to complete the game before class ends,” Letoh said. “But you do have all day.”

“We have to do this all day…” Oka said, quiet despair filling her voice.

“I can’t tell you the correct answers, but I can give you hints if you’re stuck.” Letoh said.

And so, we started over. We tried the homework plate this time for the first scenario, and got the incorrect buzzer.

“I think all of these are just wrong then,” Kalei said. “No way is eating a giant bowl of candy for breakfast the right answer.”

“Maybe every answer is wrong, but some are less wrong.” Oka suggested.

Oka’s theory proved correct; Michi noticed that we got different sizes of X’s when an answer was wrong that showed the severity of how wrong we were. If we got an answer right, there was no X, but also no indication it was the right decision.

Soon we helped Byval scream and run away from the Elka dealer and his bucket, we tattled on the Cani tail girl, ran away from a bully, and got home to be scolded by parents about how irresponsibly we’ve been spending our allowance and for playing video games.

“This is a video game,” Kalei growled. “Why are they telling us to not play games while playing a game?”

“If the moral is to turn this off, I’ll accept that.” Oka said.

“Also, if anyone actually tattled on me for my tail doing something, I would probably burst out into tears and not come back to school for like a month, minimum.” I said.

We cheered when we successfully made it through the first day, and groaned when we realized there was more. The second day of class for Byval was even more difficult, as he got yelled at by every teacher, got offered drugs and another bucket of Elka (this time from a student, whoever wrote this was big on the Elka bucket, or the prop budget was low), and had his mom show up at school to scold him about forgetting to go to beam chasers practice. In a game full of cheesy decisions, I was shocked when the next question was “Light Mom on fire with your Cani powers?”

“Why…would they put that in there?” I asked, staring in disbelief at the screen.

“That’s an easy one for winning the game at least,” Oka said.

“Byval does kinda deserve getting yelled at for skipping practice. My mom wouldn’t yell at me if I skipped, but I’d probably yell at myself. That said…please let us do a playthrough where we light the mom on fire.” Kalei said.

“Given the game’s props and special effects so far, I can’t imagine it would be worth it.” Oka said.

“But I gotta know what happens…” Iris said. Maia swatted Iris’ hand away from her mouse.

“Thinking about fire makes me want to play Fireball Catastrophe again.” Kalei said.

Marmalade gasped from the other side of the room and started waving her arms. “Dude, that game’s sick!”

“Yes!” Kalei said, waving back.

“Kalei, Marmalade, please stay focused on your own teams.” Letoh said.

Despite not choosing the really evil option, we didn’t last much farther in this run.

“You know, I just feel bad for this guy,” Oka said. “His whole life is just constant stress and pain, and the universe is punishing him for everything he does.”

“I know,” I said. “Like he never gets to spend any time with his friends! And his parents are always yelling at him if he doesn’t constantly clean the entire house daily and get straight A’s, like I would lose my mind if Stella was like that with me.”

“That’s way deeper than any thought the devs put into this game.” Kalei said.