Apoch

January 7th, 2013...it is half past the 18th hour as I write this.  The physics midyear rises in the distance like the sun behind a mountain range.  To gaze upon it now...to see it in its monstrous, omnipotent splendor...to think it was here the whole time...and only now am I beginning to acknowledge its presence...

Earlier today, I stumbled upon a game called Apoch.  A simple top down 2D shooter.  as the grey, hopeless menu screen enveloped my visage...my very soul...I knew what I had to do.  I had limited time and willpower...I have even less now...but still, my path was clear.  I had to play this game, and I had to review it for the world to see.

My heart filled with resentful joy, I set out on my journey.  The first thing that caught my eye illuminated my soul with such a bright pleasure, I felt like I might survive the night after all.  Could it be?  After all these games...one after another committing the cardinal sin of game design...I finally saw it.  So simplistic in its rectangular shape but so heartwarming in its message.  A button...written in it the words "Load Game."

This is it, I thought.  I've finally found it.  I've finally found a true, honest-to-God save feature in a Digipen game.  I fought back the pristine and salty river overflowing in my eyes.  The tears would blur my vision, and I wanted to gaze upon the beauty in front of me without obstruction.

Reluctantly I pulled my cursor away from the "Load Game" button.  This was the first time I had played this game, so there was nowhere to start but "New Game."

Once I clicked the mouse button I began my journey through the maze-like level, mowing down the undead sprites that stood in my way.  I couldn't tell what the .png monsters represented...it looked to all the world like one of them was pissing crystalized shards of urine at me, but I didn't care.  I had the freedom to quit the game and come back to it...that was all I could ask for.  How naive of me...

I didn't even care that the movement speed was something akin to a turtle in a tar pit and that since the goal of the game is to exterminate all the monsters in a level, missing one early on would have me slowly trekking back to the beginning of the stage to pop some lead in my targets.

I didn't care that the game has some kind of deep-seated phobia that the player will run out of ammo such that bullet cases are haphazardly strewn about the labyrinths so frequently that any strategy other than emitting a stream of hot metal from both barrels is inefficient, negating any challenge the game might have had as well as rendering the tertiary bullet system obsolete.

I enjoyed the terribly designed game for a while before hitting the quicksave button and exiting.  It was nary half an hour later that I decided to boot it up again, once more gazing upon the glory of the save feature.  I clicked the "Load Game" button...then it happened.

A white box appeared before me, delivering a message that drilled into my very being, making me sick to my stomach.  "Apoch.exe has stopped working" it read.  Before my very eyes, the window that held the game retreated into the unreachable depths of my start menu.  It was gone...the hope I had in the future of game design...in humanity...escaped me.

It is now approaching the 19th hour...my future looks dim.

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26136